Suddenly Seymour
by Takhira
Summary: The farplane has always depended n the last King of the Guado to keep it safe. Can Yuna help, or is the world doomed?
1. Chapter 1

"You don't know?" Paine asked. "How can you not know?" You were right there!"

"No, I said, 'I don't know,'" Yuna said.

"That's what I said," Paine said.

"No, that's what I said."

"Exactly," Paine said.

"No, I mean that's what I said."

"I know, you said you didn't know," Paine said.

"Exactly," Yuna said.

"Well, how can you not know? I mean, you were—"

"No, I SAID that."

"Exactly,"

"My head hurts," Rikku said.

"No, Paine, I said 'I don't know.'"

Brother yawned.

"That's what I said."

"Is this still the same argument?" Buddy asked.

"You want me to start over?" Yuna asked.

"Just tell me what you told him!" Paine said.

"It," Buddy said.

"How would you know?" Brother asked.

Rikku shook her head.

"I told her that I didn't know," Yuna said.

"Oh, then why didn't you say that!" Paine said.

Their audience let out a collective sigh. They were getting bored. For having saved the world from an evil machina hidden away by the church, this was one of the most anti-climactic resolutions ever.

"Do fayth take rain checks?" Paine asked.

"How should I know?"

"You saved them twice!" Paine said.

"This is why I'm an atheist," Rikku muttered. The rest of the Al Behd nodded. "Can we start over?"

Everyone sighed. Some in relief, some in frustration.

"What didn't you understand?" Yuna asked.

"Everything," Rikku said.

"Everything everything?" Paine asked.

"No, just the last five minutes everything," Rikku said.

"When did things stop having short explanations?" Buddy asked.

"When did they stop having explanations at all?" Brother asked. "I'm bored."

"I'm getting there," Yuna said.

"Getting where?" Brother asked.

"Just start over," Paine said.

"Okay," Yuna said. "From where?"

Everyone groaned.

"Now it's everything everything," Rikku said. "My head hurts."

Everyone else agreed.

"Okay, we beat Vegnagun right?" Yuna asked. Finally she was back in familiar territory. It was far to difficult to help someone in a crisis when you had to work on both ends of the conversation, as well as the middle, which she seemed to have presumed already happened. "Then there was the fayth, right?"

"Singular or plural?" Paine asked.

"Just one," Yuna said. "Then she said if I wanted Tidus—"

"Whoa, where'd he come from?" Paine asked.

"The fayth made him. Then she—"

"No, I mean, when did Tidus get into the conversation."

"He wasn't."

"Owwie," Rikku complained, holding her head. Paine was thinking the girl would have a better time with calculus.

"Why were you talking about Tidus in the first place?" Paine asked slowly through gritted teeth.

"The fayth asked if I wanted him back," Yuna answered. She was the only one not bothered by this. What bothered her was that it bothered others for no reason she could see. "I told you?"

"When?" Paine asked.

"When did it happen or when did I mention it?"

"Never mind," Paine said, holding her head. "So what happens if you want Tidus back?"

"We have to take care of him."

"Him who?" Buddy asked. Flying through hail and hitting the errant bird was better than this. And that was when Brother was driving.

"Tidus?" Rikku asked. Rikku was actually smarter than most people thought. Once you got to know her, you realized a lot of Al Behd's had similar circular logic. She was merely more forward, more energetic, and a lot more bouncy than most, which somehow made people think that was connected with her mental processes, similar to thinking a man with a limp is deaf.

"No, Seymour," Yuna said. "I told you, the fayth was his—used to—was formerly—"

"Something like that," Paine summed up, hoping to hear the other half the sentence before it got dark.

"She was his mom."

"That guy has connections everywhere," Buddy said.

Brother fell over. He liked looking at Yuna, but the conversation was a strain on his simple mentality. Whatever happened to 'let's shoot it' or 'I have a plan involving a new skirt?'

"So, you spent two hours telling us we have to babysit some idiot who misses his mommy?"

"Well… yeah… but when you say it makes me sound stupid."

Buddy sighed. He really wanted to get to the end of this. It was hard being the voice of maturity if you left in the middle of the conversation, which was starting to seem like a verbal surreal picture with doorways that lead to upside-down staircases.

"I thought he was dead," Rikku said, displaying her perfect logic, which only sometimes met with common sense, only by colliding headfirst into it.

"He was dead," Paine said.

"He is dead," Yuna corrected.

"Well, that makes that part simpler," Buddy said. He was actually amazed They had gotten through three sentences without having to backtrack to half-an hour ago.

"Couldn't you just say you were sorry?" Paine asked.

"Paine, we can't just give him a present and apologize for hitting him on the head!"

"Hit who?" Rikku asked.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Paine complained.

"I volunteer!" Brother said, still lying on the floor.

"No one's doing that," Buddy said.

"No one's doing anything," Paine said. "Why do we have to take care of some suicidal fruitcake?"

"I don't like fruitcake."

"And we're off to a wonderful start," Paine muttered.

"I started hours ago," Yuna said.

"And yet, you haven't finished," Paine said.

"Where was I?" Yuna asked.

Everyone turned toward a strange thumping sound, only to find that it was brother, banging his head on the floor. Most found themselves quite envious at this.

"Well, they're the fayth and they have Tidus, first," Yuna said. " And apparently there's something about Guado magic, which was complicated, but important."

"Let's just stick with that explanation for now," Paine said.

"What's this have to do with us?" Buddy asked.

"Well, the farplane is getting ruined," Yuna said, not really caring herself.

"We don't have to worry about that for decades," Paine said.

"Actually, y'know how there were flowers in one part and everything else was just rocks? There used to be more of those."

"Rocks? Paine asked.

"Flowers?" Rikku asked.

"Yeah," Yuna said, confusing her cousin. Rikku wasn't used to being right about things people said were complicated. "And then there was something about a line of rulers keeping it that way, and keeping the fiends down."

"He's picking all the flowers?" Rikku asked, the paused. "Down where?"

Everyone sighed. The echo sighed.

In Paine's opinion things should be fixed by hitting people on the head, sometimes both parties because they refuse to smarten up. This situation appeared to be completely hit-less and it angered her.

In Rikku's opinion, there were bad things, good things, and broken things. Good things were good, bad things were hit or they exploded, broken things were fixed and then became good things. She wasn't sure if this was bad or broken, and she was pretty sure it wasn't good.

Yuna thought everyone was nice until they did something bad, then they weren't good anymore and had to be dealt with—often permanently. She didn't know the spelling of 'psychology' or 'trauma,' let alone the meaning or significance.

Buddy really had no idea what to do with world-threatening situations, he just believed that there are some people who shouldn't be allowed to speak in certain situations. The problem was, the more he worked with the Gullwings, the more people he thought should be silent. Unfortunately, these people were the ones with the important things to say.

"I don't know," someone said. Everyone agreed.


	2. Chapter 2

The problem with Yuna was that she wasn't really a people-person. A people-person can still smile and go 'oh, well,' to someone who doesn't agree with them. Yuna had happily made a vendetta against half of Spira, which was satisfied when she became famous and got nearly everything she wanted. Yuna was merely a 'people-who-like-me-person.'

Paine was a 'people-I-can-ignore-person.' She was good at ignoring people. If, for some reason, she couldn't ignore them, she hit them on the head until they were unconscious and ignored them. It was when they regained consciousness that gave her problems.

Rikku was a people person. Someone could shout ethnic slurs at her and she'd merely bounce and yell some back while smiling.

No one had ever told any of them this. The ones who didn't like Yuna either kept well away or were already dead. The ones who didn't like Paine, she ignored. The ones who didn't like Rikku, she merely said 'Okay,' to and nothing was ever accomplished.

On the airship, two people ignored the problem, two more considered it, while one actually thought about it until she fell asleep dreaming about it.

…………..

'People-or-not-people-persons' were not what was occupying Seymour's mind. In fact, what was occupying Seymour's mind was fleeing from what else was occupying his mind.

No one gave him instructions on how to rule or be Maester, but he'd gotten the hang of it. But there was some fine print in being the son of the ruler of Guadosalam no one had ever pointed out to him.

As easy as 'What he does no know will not hurt him,' seems, in the end, someone has slept with at least one relative, someone's eyes are missing and the survivors—if there are any—are standing amongst rubble and possibly corpses with only 'oops' to say about it.

And then there seems to be the universal habit of people trodding on the fabric of reality until it breaks and then everyone stands in a circle and points to the left when asked whose fault it was.

Seymour had at one point in time noticed that general consensus said it was his fault, no matter what happened, but at the moment he didn't care.

There were a great many flaws in the farplane. The first was that everyone went to the same place. Someone infamous for murdering people because he felt like it would have a great time, while everyone else wouldn't.

The second flaw was that you didn't die. You were already dead. Said infamous murderer would have an even better time.

Then there was who was chosen to keep the farplane nice and tidy and happy and well… landscapy.

At first, he disliked his lot in life. Later, he disliked his lot in the afterlife. Then he pretty much settled on any form of existing he did sucked majorly.

Especially now that the general form of the farplane had gone from ugly to downright unfriendly. The farplane was the only known place in Spira where the landscape actually got up and bit you and chased you if you ran away. And it wasn't very known.

The only comfort Seymour got—the only time he got was pseudo-awakening on the farplane after something pseudo-killed him, only for him to be pseudo-alive- was that wherever he was, there was no one else to give them a piece of their mind about what his had done to the place.

……………

The saying 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' is slightly off. It implies one can choose to walk down the road, and even turn around and go the other way at the smell of brimstone.

In fact, the gate holding back hell is knocked down by good intentions. All hell breaks loose right on top of you and you can't tell demons to go away or that they have the wrong address. And there's no warning.

Hell is nature's latest natural disasters. The world had no problems with it before people tried to play ethics with house rules. Like tidal waves, freak storms, and volcanoes, there was always warning that it would happen. People knew society was due for a backlash, or that the mountain was about to spew molten rock everywhere. The problem was the times of the disaster were only 'very soon' or 'just now' with nothing in between. You could get out of the way, or sit back and wait for something to hit you in the head and complain about it later. Either way, it still did damage.

Common sense is not integrated in any part of real education. Some people learn it, but to most the fact that playing around with the world's metaphysics is not a good idea is never grasped. Plus, there's always some charismatic idiot or two who says 'sweep it under the rug, the cops never look there for disembodied heads,' and somehow it seems so convenient that everyone agrees.

Right now there is a huge corpse barely even constituting as 'under' the most poorly built rug ever made and the walls of hell haven't just opened, but fallen off their hinges. All metaphorically, of course.

What was really happening was a freak thunderstorm with no rain. The impressive part was not that it was eight times bigger than anything in recorded history, but the fact that it was coming out of the farplane. The lighting was the equivalent to normal lightning as a large gun being fired is to throwing a poorly made paper airplane.

Suddenly common sense kicked in and the residents fled. No one really paid attention to minor details, such as fire, which was blue, the fact that the portal to the farplane had grown black, but was getting bigger while the edges were not merely growing fuzzy, but unraveling like cheap fake silk.

Sometimes nature is gradual, making glaciers, eroding cliffs, and making beaches. Sometimes it waits and waits as you poison it and then it vomits all over you. The same works with magic, and the Guado had been feeding the farplane two generations of bad cheese.

…………..

A siren—or whatever the beeping flashing thing was—was going off. It didn't seem to be in favor of stopping.

"You get up," Paine said.

"Don' wanna get up," Rikku muttered.

"I'm not getting up, I already got up yesterday," Yuna said.

Disasters have an inconvenient way of being inconvenient. This is why there aren't that many heroes. There's a difference between fighting a fire, and fighting a fire when you're amazingly flammable, several miles from any water source, and a monster is trying to eat you.

At the moment it was four-something in the morning. It was a time when numbers shouldn't be significant.

"Make it stop," Paine muttered.

"You make it stop," Yuna said.

"I'm not getting up," Paine said.

"ZZZ," Rikku said.

…………………

Soon annoyance proved a more powerful force than anything, and everyone was on the bridge, in their pajamas, and yawning. Buddy kept falling asleep and banging his head on the console. After a while he gave up and woke up later with button-prints all over his face.

"What's going on?" Yuna asked, then yawned.

"We've got reports that Guadosalam just exploded," Shinra said.

"Okay," Rikku said, as Paine shoved her off her shoulder. At three in the morning, you'll believe nearly anything. This was an hour later and the time when you'd believe anything at all.

"What do the people in Guadosalam say?" Paine asked.

"Nothing, the comsphere exploded," Shinra said.

"Looks like an open and shut case," Paine said.

There was a long pause. Brother's head hit the console for the last time. Buddy put a lot of effort into along blink. Rikku fell asleep on her feet and Paine shook her awake.

Cognition finally finished in Yuna's brain. "Should it have exploded?"

"I don't think so…" Shinra said.

"Why'd it have to explode now?" Rikku asked.

"Don't you mean 'Why'd it explode in the first place?'" Paine asked.

"I dunno," Rikku said.

"Any survivors?" Yuna asked.

"I don't know," Shinra answered. "The place still seems to be on fire."

"The whole place?" Yuna asked.

"Whole thing," Buddy said.

"That means we can't do anything at the moment," Paine said, and lazily wandered off to bed.

"I guess she's right," Yuna said. "We'll have to wait until the flames die down." She left for her bed as well.

Rikku passed out in the middle of the floor.

"Yes, but… Why did it explode?" Buddy asked to no one in general.

Brother's face hit the windshield wiper button.


	3. Chapter 3

It was later in the day that they all returned to the disaster, which hadn't stopped being a disaster. The blue flames had died away, and at least a few reports of survivors were confirmed.

Nothing was actually decidedly better.

The Gullwings had to trek towards Guadosalam from the river, but didn't manage to get anywhere near the heart of where the city used to be.

The landscape had turned dark. The sky disappeared into blackness, as did most of the landscape. Rocks and plants took on a strange solidified-metaphorical look to them; they were almost positive they had wandered into a realm where yellow had a sound and music had smell. They didn't venture very far into the strange place. Although the shadows seemed as solid as rocks, there was the undeniable glint of large teeth coming from them.

"Hello?" Yuna called out.

Something growled so loud and yet so low that it wasn't sound anymore; it was an earthquake.

"This might be that 'complicated but important guado magic' you mentioned?" Paine asked.

"That's a good guess," Yuna said.

"Yunie…" Rikku said in a scared voice. Yuna and Paine turned to see what it was all about.

There were footprints, huge and vaguely like those of someone's boots in the dark ground. They led out of the darkness and into normality, then they disappeared.

"So…" Paine started. "Where's he gonna sleep?"

…………………

Yuna was suddenly annoyed. At least, exponentially more annoyed than before. Somehow, in her logic, being the twice-sole savior of the farplane justified it as hers. It wasn't as she'd left it.

The flowers were old and brown and overall dead. Things didn't die in the farplane. They didn't because… because… because she said so. So there.

She looked around. There was no portal to more farplane. There was no anything else. She was standing in nothingness… maybe. It was dark nothingness. Either that or it was just nothing and it was dark. Metaphors aren't easy on the eyes.

"Hello?" she asked.

Some sort of solid blackness rushed her and she was knocked over. She shot at it once and it left, seemingly more out of disinterest than anything else. If darkness had the ability to regard something, this darkness regarded her in the same way a cat regards a carrot.

Something showed up. It looked like a bad watercolor. It had no distinctive shape, just a lot of verticality. Parts were bluish, parts were white, some part was black, but not as black as the rest of the place, and somewhere in it had a color that could be described as 'pale flesh.' This was all if you squinted hard enough.

"Who are you?"

"The fayth," it whispered, with some effort.

"Um," Yuna said. "About that thing you asked me to do…"

"We are all losing power," the fayth said.

"Yeah, um… if it'll fix all this… and the things with the teeth…I can… um… I can try."

"This world… depends on his mind…" The fayth said. "Make him happy."

Make some guy who vilified parenthood and idolized Sin happy. Sure. No problem. Oh, and don't blow up the world… anymore than it already is. Yeah.. that would be easy.

"Is there any other—"

"…No…"

"Okay… I guess," Yuna said. When life gave you lemons, you made lemonade. Suddenly that adage stopped working. Squish Sin, good. Squish fiend, good. Squish Vegnagun, good. Now the lemon life—or not life—that was giving her was Seymour. 'I guess I'll think of something' she decided.

"Go back to where it all started," the fayth said. It seemed to be losing what solidity it already had. "For him."

"…Okay…" Yuna said. She was about to continue, to ask for clues or a hint or even directions, but the fayth was gone. It made no sign of being about to return.

Still, what could possibly go wrong?

…………………………

There was more running. It was almost always running. In life you had the option to turn around and say 'Oh yeah?' or 'Fine, finish it and see if I care!'

This wasn't life. This was an existing un-life. This was where, just because it was 'game over' it was also 'restart.' Saying 'Oh, yeah?' got you eaten or impaled or flayed, or whatever means the metaphor-come-to-life demons does to kill you. Then you get up and his buddy appears and says he knows what you said and doesn't think it's very nice. If you said 'See if I care,' they did. They often saw to it that you DID care, also. They saw to it that you cared a lot very unhappily. And if you didn't care, that just made them madder, but had no real difference in end result.

Seymour was tired of dying…un-dying…whatever it was. All he wanted was to shout at his own mind 'Go away' with some expletives added and have it listen—and especially obey.

This wasn't even real life. In real life sometimes you turned around and even though you got punched and even if you lost, the important thing was that you got some of your own punches in.

Demons, being metaphors, are rather unpunchable. You can't even say 'I'm not afraid of you!' because they get mad and make you afraid of them again.

So here he was… wherever here was. The problem with infinity was that you can easily get lost in it. The landscape hand been changing so much he wasn't even sure if he restarted in the same place.

It hadn't always been like this. It had been trashed when his father was alive, and he'd coincidentally did his best to keep it good, but then he'd died at the hands of some pretty smiling person he thought would be his friend and the farplane lost it's gleam, it's shine, it's sparkle, and replaced them with mud, pointy and hard rocks, bits of fire, and monsters. After slow magical erosion, the whole metaphorical cliff fell on him, not without turning into monsters first.

He considered the whole place a nightmare and since the farplane was indeed where dreams were made real, it was true.

He was running. He kept running. He'd long ago ran out of seeing any point to 'Oh, yeah?'s and attempts at 'Go the fuck away!'s.

He was running away—

--And then suddenly he was running towards. He skidded to a stop. The place was familiar, but the farplane took on a more… 'evil' décor than emulating a flashback. It was colder here. In fact, it was freezing, probably literally. On occasion he could see his breath. The place was made of stone, a mix of actually built stonework, and just fallen down rubble. It was dark. It was damp.

He heard a slight slithery-scraping noise, not one metaphors make. He turned around. Before he could blink, the giant lizard leapt at him.

………………….

It took nearly an entire day, fighting monsters that weren't solid, fiends that had grown not only to giant size but also some extra spikes and even heads.

All the while, they kept trying to find the place where 'it all started for him.'

It wasn't Guadosalam, because there wasn't anything left of that. Even though they had been there to defeat monsters, it wasn't Beseid or Kilika. It turned out not to be Luca, although the stadium was now a pile of rubble. It wasn't Macalania, because that had sunk. Bevelle hadn't seen him, and the populace was busy arming themselves against creatures, or whatevers, from the Not-So-Farplane.

They checked outposts, temples, ruins, and roads. There was no sign of him. Yuna remembered when that was a good thing.

"Damn!" Yuna swore. "Where the fuck did it all start?"

"And what's 'it?'" Rikku asked.

"Yeah, those monsters and near-death experiences were just side notes to this story, huh?" Paine muttered.

"Why doesn't anyone tell me these things?" Yuna said.

"What, giving you all the information so you don't have to work at it, or not to kill people that might have mystical importance to the world?" Paine asked.

"Yeah," Yuna said.

"His mom's a fayth, right?" Paine asked.

"Either that or some fayth is off their rocker and really likes him," Yuna said.

"Then there's a temple to her, right?" Paine asked.

"I guess so," Yuna said.

Rikku, shrugged. To her, anything beyond 'the farplane is there' was ignored. She was agnostic, which meant you knew there were powerful beings, but you didn't have to care.

"So where is it?" Paine asked. She had been a reporter, not a summoner. Aeon stuff was Yuna's area of expertise… hopefully.

"I don't know," Yuna said. "I never met her."

"You skipped a temple?" Paine asked.

"Not to my knowledge," Yuna said. Now she was confused. She never thought about it. A temple was a huge, great, looming thing. And a fayth… how the heck could you miscount fayth?

"You mean, there's a temple out there that I—everyone missed?"

"Well, no one used it a generation ago because it wasn't there," Paine said.

Rikku, who had let the conversation fly over her head like fast weather, suddenly stopped in mid-bounce, which nearly caused her to fall over.

"Can it be a broken temple?" she asked.

Suddenly everyone on the airship was looking at her.

"What?" she asked.


	4. Chapter 4

"Why didn't anyone tell me there was a temple on Baaj Island?" Yuna whined, her complaint echoing.

"Probably no one gave a damn," Paine said.

"Wouldn't Seymour?" Rikku asked

"Yeah, well, he probably didn't give a damn about anyone else knowing," Paine said.

"What happened here?" Yuna asked.

"I think the point is what didn't happen here," Paine said. "The whole place hasn't been touched by anyone but scavengers in years,"

"Hey!" Rikku complained.

"I never said it was your fault. What were you going to do, come in with ladders and plaster?"

"I didn't mean that, look." Yuna was not going to admit she was one who overlooked details. Well, not small details that had nothing to do with her personally, but she had the strange ability to spot toys from miles away. She pointed out, in the gloom, a tiny, old, fuzzy shape in amongst the rocks with her light. Something had moved the stones, because the old thing looked like it had been buried completely for a while and only now was it again seeing the light—gloom of … whenever.

Yuna carefully crept towards the thing. It was the local inhabitants she feared, not the thing itself.

Things flickered in the shadows, creeping back and forth and on occasion putting a tooth at the right angle for it to shine in the darkness, but they kept their dramatic distance for now.

Yuna pulled the thing out of the rubble. It was a sad thing indeed. It had once been a toy, there was evidence of stuffing still in it. It was headless, one arm was coming off, and another was wide open at a seam. If you used your imagination and fixed all the missing parts of the clothes it wore, and added colors, it looked like a Guado Glories Blitzball player,

"Yunie, put it down, it's creepy and icky," Rikku said.

"Actually, I think anything that could have been on it died years ago" Paine said.

"It's old," Yuna said.

"Duh," Paine said. "Come on, you wanna find the moron or not?"

"I'm coming," Yuna said, pocketing the thing carefully. There had been a kid here in this run-down iceberg. Who in their right mind would leave a kid here?

Rikku lead the way through the ruins, which made Paine think they were automatically lost.

Except for the scrapings of lizards and their own breath, there was no noise. Usually, wherever the Gullwings went, there was noise, lots of noise. Things and people screamed, machina made noise, local wildlife competed to see who was louder and often there was someone playing music.

"I don't like this place," Rikku said.

"I don't think anyone's supposed to," Paine said.

"I don't think he's here," Yuna said. "You'd think he'd call out or something."

"Yeah, the most wanted guy in Spira is wrecking the farplane and he's going to ask for directions," Paine said.

Paine turned around to fight off a monster that was scrabbling at the ground.

"Well, you'd think he'd do—"

"Uh, Yuna?"

The whole place was dark, and the light from the Al Behd devices tended to discolor things. Still, a large black patch of drying liquid lay on the ground, with red tints to it.

"…something," Yuna finished.

The lizard lingered near the pool of light, waiting for the rude strangers to leave him with the meal he'd rightfully found.

Yuna didn't like it when things didn't go her way, when the world didn't work the way she believed it should. When reason flies in the face of conceited faith, faith throws a tantrum. She felt one coming on, only to be interrupted by Paine again.

"There's more! It's a trail!"

The three followed the trail, which had not been laid out with the convenience of anyone—or anything—following him in mind. They had to scale up rocks, ranging in size from tiny things that slipped under your shoe, to footholds that gave way at bad times, to sheer cliffs that didn't like being manhandled and still managed to make you trip on them.

It led straight up half-walls, through nearly whole walls with holes in them, and through rarely used doorways. That might have been because nearly all doorways had caved in a long time ago. The path was straight in the same sense a coastline is straight. The person who made the path had a good idea of what straight was, but not very good control of their legs.

Politely, lizards moved out of the way of the three, but not so politely, went right back to scrabbling and licking at the blood just after they had passed.

The path led straight to the doorway to the Room of the fayth. There were handprints in what Yuna really hoped wasn't blood.

"Can you lift that Paine?" Yuna asked.

"Probably, but I think we have to deal with them first," Paine said, pointing backwards with her thumb.

The shadows had crept closer. All of them with teeth. Shining a light on the shadows didn't make them go away. It just revealed that they were lizards. They were bigger than the ones licking at the puddles. The wall was covered with them, and they were waiting.

It suddenly dawned on the girls that the lizards could think, and more importantly, consider. It was obvious their brains were running on the same track of _'Why cook dinner, when the pizza's about to arrive?' 'Well, then you open the door and we can eat it...' 'How do you open a door?'_

They weren't quick thinkers, but they got there. And very slowly, they were getting through the sentence… _'How about Chinese, it's closer?'_

Quietly, Rikku pulled something out of her pocket and threw it at the lizards. One bit it and dropped it. Another licked it. Both found it didn't taste like food.

As the eyes of the entire horde turned back to the Gullwings and the lizards argued who should go first in their own, silent, lizard language, the thing Rikku had thrown exploded. It didn't make any real dent in the lizard population, but changed the center of their attention entirely as the dove for remains of their fallen comrades.

Paine lifted the door and everyone slipped in.

They all stopped what they were doing and what they were thinking as the door closed and they laid eyes on the figure sprawled amongst a few rocks and the gruesome remains of a lizard.

Seymour was there, but not consciously. At the moment, without any effort at all, he stretched the definitions of many things. He stretched the definition of being alive. He stretched definition of the color pale skin was supposed to be. In some places it snapped.

He had been bitten on the side of his chest. He had managed to slow the bleeding, but that was a far cry from actually fixing his injury. Especially with his rib stretching the definition of broken. He must have wandered all over the place looking for somewhere to hide. Something had tried to bite his leg as he kicked it in the face. The main problem was the teeth embedded in it. The major problem he had was his hand. As he had gotten in here, a lizard had snuck in and then bitten his hand, refusing to let go. He'd smashed its brains on a rock and then passed out gracelessly.

This stretched the definition of injured and probably brought it into another category altogether. Thankfully, that category wasn't 'dead,' yet. His breathing was shallow, but it was evident.

In any other context, someone would have poked Seymour with a stick.


	5. Chapter 5

Bevelle tended to be a central disaster area now and then. When the whole world was in danger, Bevelle had two or three disasters to handle, while other places usually had one and even some were lucky enough to have to share.

Baralai wasn't sure what this counted as, disaster or not. Anyone extraneous in Bevelle had been evacuated. Where to, someone else had handled, and then fled.

It was him, a few guards, and some former priests who thought they were too important to leave. Or they were too senile. Except for the priests, who insisted they could accomplish something—though they didn't say for good or bad—in the lower corridors, everyone was sitting on the rooftops.

There were giant black things, which had different shapes, depending on which angle you looked at them. Although you couldn't do physical damage to them, they certainly could manage physical blows to you—or at least your buildings. They certainly didn't like it if you told them to bugger off.

The basement was flooded with the things. Admittedly, those ones weren't doing anything. There was one annoying one, however. And it was eating the gate.

He and the guards sat on the roof and watched while it ignored them—well, it hadn't ignored the stupid guard who poked at it.

He sighed. If only Seymour had hired some flunkies other than him, then he'd be making coffee and deemed extraneous and wouldn't be in this situation. He just hoped that meant he wouldn't be in a different monster's stomach.

………………………

The lizards were easily dealt with. One sharp Dark Knight suit, two guns, and one casualty convinced them that it wasn't worth going after four bits of food if three caused you to lose you teeth, if not your head.

Seymour was not known for his cooperation. He was gifted like that. He could be annoying while dead, he could rain on your parade by agreeing with you, he could insult you by blinking, and he could ruin your day by standing still in the next city. At the moment, he was heavy and hard to carry, and thus hard to rescue.

Some of the lizards followed. They were interested, but cautious. Mostly, they were jealous and angry. It was one thing to steal food. It was another not to eat it at all, but merely wander around with it. Cannibalism was perfectly fine for them, so they found no reason that humans shouldn't do it too.

After a few more rooms, the Gullwings finally got back to the ship.

Now came the hard part: what to do with him.

……………..

There is one thing and one thing only that rules the working if the universe. Compared to it, all other laws and rules are mere guidelines.

This is not what the universe hinges on, but it is the entire building and front lawn.

It is not gravity. It is not love. It is not destiny or fate. It is not death, justice, karma, or taxes.

It is the fact that things are not fair.

Nothing in the universe is fair. The universe itself is not fair. Life isn't fair. Death isn't fair. Un-life isn't fair. Afterlife isn't fair.

And anyone who never believed in such a fundamental truth is a very dangerous person.

……………………..

The boys decided it would be best if they set up a place for Seymour. Actually, Buddy wanted to give the girls privacy and the others something to do. Besides, he had a nagging feeling something would turn out pink if the girls were left to it.

"I don't think skin's supposed to be those colors," Rikku said.

"Not unless it's a bad tattoo," Paine said.

"So what are we going to do?" Yuna asked. Potions and healing spells were beyond this.

"Well, first we need a doctor," Paine said. "Technically we could take that hand off if we had to, but I'm not sure about his rib."

"You can't be serious," Yuna said.

"Okay, two—" Paine noticed the very frightened look Rikku was giving her. "—One of us could take his hand off. You're all pussies."

"We can't have a doctor in here!" Yuna said.

" Well, I doubt a plumber will help," Paine said. "Look, we'll just bribe some Al Behd."

"We can't bribe someone!"

"It'd hardly be the worst we've ever done, Yuna," Paine said. "What with stealing, vandalism, breaking and entering, and murder."

"Defiling temples and religions," Rikku added. "Or is that too minor?"

……………………

Yuna had never seen anything she did as a crime. Because she was there.

Crimes were petty and mean and bad. She was important, nice, and overall, her.

She didn't take everything nailed down, not without a fight. Not without a cause.

She had to be there, and so had the thing, and so it was destiny that she always had ninety-nine potions, none of which she had purchased legally, but all of which—in her view—belonged to her.

And so, after someone else flew the airship, Paine found the person she had once gotten to know briefly, Rikku had wanted to help and fainted, Yuna told the confused man not to speak of what was going on, for it was in the name of greater good.

He shrugged and said he had four giant black dogs on his lawn and hadn't been able to go home since yesterday.

……………..

At first, nothing really happened. The hole, or whatever it was that Guadosalam had exploded—or imploded—into was getting mildly bigger.

Big dark things hung around and annoyed the local wildlife, often by eating them and anything else around. Now they seemed bored.

One was in the remains of the stadium at Luca and had curled up and was—seemingly—asleep. Until you got near it.

Three were lost in Macalania, one of which was digging.

The one in Bevelle had left by the time it had reached one of those hours when no one should have been awake. Baralai decided anyone up at that hour without a good excuse would be punished somehow.

He didn't go back down. From the sounds of it, there were still more in the lower levels and he was running out of other priests.

The thing that ate the gate had seemed to do it out of spite. He remembered having a dog like that. That only up side had been the fact that the dog ate the landlord. At least, he presumed it ate the landlord. He never saw the landlord again, so he made the next logical conclusion.

………………………………..

Some part of Seymour thought he should be awake, but it kept getting vetoed by exhaustion.

One eye would open, attempt to focus, and a question would fuzzily form in his brain. Then he'd fall asleep after having struggled to get the first word coherent.

It went on for hours.

……………………………….

When Seymour officially awoke, it was with a small scream and he was suddenly sitting upright and panting. It was a habit of his.

Now, there are different people when it comes to finding themselves in totally different surroundings.

Some look about and go "Oh, bother."

In the case of Tidus, some wonder where the bathroom is.

Some inspect their inventory because they've forgotten what's in their pockets. These people should not go on adventures. They should stay home and not touch anything.

In Seymour's case, he barely gave the landscape a glance and he said "Fuck."

Seymour didn't like unusual places. He had a hard enough time with usual ones.

Carefully, he stood up and looked around. He noticed he still had his pants on, but nothing else. Well, that wasn't so bad. He was attached to wearing pants.

The room he was in defined bleak. It was entirely metal. It wasn't even metal of different colors. The only thing that broke up the monotony was the occasional metal brace for the ceiling. There was a door, which led to an equally bleak bathroom as far as he could see.

He wasn't the type to steal toiletries.

A pile of blankets and a pillow had been the bed he slept on. He would have been polite enough to make it, had he know what it was meant to look like made.

About a foot from that were his shoes. They were scuffed and dented, but that was shoes for you. One had a warped tooth in it from when he kicked a lizard in the face.

Apart from all that were the floor and a small window, and a closed door. The floor was uninteresting and even though he wasn't very near the window, he could see it overlooked the ocean. Thinking about that made him uneasy. Thinking of thinking about that made him uneasy.

That left the door.

To Tidus, this would be a logic problem.

To Seymour, this was a call to defend himself, and not with a lawyer.

He knew he was alive. He'd figured that out on Baaj. You don't bleed on the farplane. Someone had unkilled him, and he didn't like it.

_Well_, he thought, _I'm not getting through that door without my shoes. _That seemed logical. And mildly comfortable; his feet were getting cold.

He wandered over to his shoes, and just as he was about to pull the tooth out, he froze.

He braced himself against the wall and slowly slid down, eyes fixed forward as he fell on his shoes.

He held his left hand out in front of him. There, where he remembered flesh and sometimes blood, where he had a scar a yeti gave him once when he was seventeen was some strange and cruel mechanical mockery of it all.

His hand—HIS hand—wasn't there anymore. There was just some… thing now, a meticulously stylized copy, right down to the long nails.

He had nothing against Machina, he just preferred it to stay away from him. When people broke, they got sick or died. When Machina broke, it tended to explode. Besides, Machina were accessories, they were tools. They weren't limbs or appendages.

They weren't—his whole arm was trembling. Unconsciously, he thought of moving his fingers consecutively. The metal digits twitched in perfect rhythm, clicking as the nails tapped the palm.

Seymour did the only thing he could think of. He let out the longest scream in history.

……………………….

"I think he's awake," Buddy said.

"Taking it better than I thought," Brother said. He actually made a nice conversational partner when no scantily clad girls were around.

"How so?"

"I don't hear anything breaking."

………………….

Seymour had woken up in weird places before. He could deal with that. But now pieces of him had gone missing. He noticed a half-band of metal over his chest. He wasn't too happy about that, either, but it was something he could live with.

Suddenly, the door began to open slowly. There was no telling what was going to come through, so Seymour grabbed the closest thing he could find to throw and readied himself to attack. He'd have preferred magic, but he didn't trust the Al Behd no to make things that crashed or exploded if you accidentally hit them.

The door opened further.

Seymour tensed.

A foot stepped through, followed by the rest of the body.

Seymour froze.

Yuna stepped into the room. "What're you doing?"

Two more people stepped into the room. Seymour didn't recognize them, although he was sure that, of the other women with Yuna, one had been darker-haired and more endowed in the chest area last time.

"You weren't going to throw a shoe at me, were you?" Yuna asked.

Seymour froze. Defending yourself against Yuna was a bad idea. Then again, doing anything at, with, to, or even near Yuna was probably a bad idea.

The shoe fell from his trembling hand. Well, that solved that problem.

"Y—Yuna?" he asked.

"Yeah I—" she said stepping forward.

He took a giant step back.

She stopped, but said nothing.

"Yuna?" he asked again.

"Does he do anything else?" Paine asked.

"… Huh?" Seymour asked.

"Well, that's a bit better," Paine conceded.

……………………….

The things had settled down. Whatever they were, they were harmless at a distance. If you went up to them and threatened them, or tried to move them, they ate you. Other than that, they sat there and waited.

They were definitely waiting.

No one had any idea what they were waiting for, and most didn't want to know.

The thing about the waiting, that everyone forgets, is that once whatever you were waiting for became apparent, you dealt with it. You didn't sit there and keep watching it.


	6. Chapter 6

Because he had nowhere to go, the doctor had a drink.

Because the only other person there was drunk and unconscious or maybe even dead, the barkeeper was interested.

Because it helped him forget the creatures on his lawn, the doctor ordered more drinks.

Because he had more drinks, he began to talk.

Because the man still had money, the barkeeper listened.

Because of what he said, the creatures stopped waiting.

Because of that, what the barkeeper had heard suddenly became more important, and the doctor became dead.

Because it was over, the things went back to waiting.

…………………

Three seconds into the confrontation, they were already at an impasse. The girls waited for Seymour to do something, and Seymour waiting for them to turn out to be his imagination.

Neither seemed to be happening.

Yuna decided to try and calm him down. "It's—" was as far as she got.

He took huge step back. "Don't come near me!" he said. Technically there wasn't much he could do about it. If she wanted, she could keep coming and he'd hit his head on a wall.

"Why not?" Yuna asked. Things weren't going as planned. It lacked any of the 'Yes, I'll be nice, I'm sorry,' bits from him. Why was he looking at her as if she was going to kill him any second now? He was the bad guy; he wasn't supposed to look terrified—although at the moment he seemed more confused than anything else. Unless she'd missed something.

"What do you mean 'Why not?'" he asked, suddenly reverting to his arrogant self to the best he could while still so confused. "You murdered me!"

Yuna cast a quick glance at her friends, who just shrugged. "I just saved your life!" she yelled back. She kept expecting a reaction similar to 'Well, if you put it that way, you're entirely right.' It kept not happening.

"I saved your life once," he said, crossing his arms. "And I distinctly remember not chopping pieces off of you and replacing them in the process."

"When did this happen?" Rikku and Paine asked.

Yuna put her face in her hand and sighed. This was going to take some work just figuring out who wanted to do what with whom and who thought someone wanted to do what with whom. "Whoops," she muttered.

"'Whoops?'" Seymour muttered. No one was listening to him. He decided that was an improvement.

"Well, I'd forgotten about it by the time you showed up, Paine," Yuna said, taking her hand away. She sighed again. "And… well, I was kinda preoccupied with the whole proposal thing when we found you," she said to Rikku.

"You seem to have come to a strange decision for being so preoccupied," Seymour said. "A 'no,' would have sufficed."

"But… the sphere… You're father tried to come out of the Farplane and I had to send him back and he dropped a sphere," Yuna said.

"So?" Paine whispered to her friends. Either she didn't know Seymour could hear her, or she didn't care.

"So it was him in the sphere," Rikku said. "Jyscal, I mean. He said Seymour was going to kill him and he was out to destroy Spira."

"So?" Paine asked again.

"Well, his dad did die mysteriously, no one would talk about it, and he seemed pretty cheerful when it happened two weeks ago," Yuna said. "And he did want to be Sin."

"I can hear you," he said.

"Well, you did," Yuna said.

"And which one of your guardians would you have used as a final summon if I hadn't volunteered?" Seymour asked.

"He's got a point, Yuna," Paine said.

Yuna conceded that killing Sin from inside and everything that happened after that had been ad-libbed and she hadn't really planned on it. She didn't concede it out loud though.

"What about the rest of it?" Paine asked. She'd never seen Seymour for more than three seconds in a sphere. All she'd gotten from that was that he was snappy and a bit big for someone who wears a dress. He did have the hips for it, though.

Now though, she was feeling a bit disappointed. Evil people said things more along the lines of 'Yes I did, and no, I don't care about you or other people' when cornered. Seymour was more along the lines of 'And?' and 'Do what now?'

"Rest of what?" Seymour asked.

"Well, did you kill him?" Paine asked. This was almost as bad as getting a story out of Yuna.

"Yes… but… wait a minute…" Seymour suddenly looked as if he were doing hard long division. It didn't look like he'd come to an answer soon.

"Let's get back to that, shall we?" Paine asked. She didn't need this. She didn't need any of this. She didn't need the fayth asking for favors. She didn't need an hour to figure out a sentence. Well, at Yuna had used sentences.

They were back to staring for a second, and then Seymour caught on that nothing was really going to get answered without a little more work from him. "What's going on?"

"The fayth asked us—me to… take care of you. Cheer you up, I guess," Yuna said.

"…And we're back to the staring contest," Paine said, seeing how Seymour was having difficulty wrapping his head around being cheered up when it involved Yuna putting him in a flying metal box and replacing his hand with a machina replica. "Look, we're leaving all the doors unlocked and you can wander around anywhere you want. Just don't do anything stupid… too stupid. Right?" she said, hitting Yuna in the ribs.

"Ow!" Yuna complained.

"Maybe you can help us figure some things out," Paine said.

"I don't even know your names," Seymour said. That was the problem with him. It's very annoying to fight someone who gives you the feeling they're going to ask for a time out for teatime.

"I'm Rikku, don't you remember me?" Rikku said cheerfully.

"Should I?" Seymour asked.

Rikku suddenly had a choice of 'I was the one eating your food while you were saying stuff' or 'I was the one throwing grenades.' "No," she answered.

"My name's Paine," Paine said.

"I'm hoping it won't be too appropriate," Seymour said.

"You were ruler of Guadosalam, right?" Paine asked. She had a difficult task ahead.

"What about it?" Seymour asked.

"It exploded," Rikku said, before Paine could find the worlds to put it a bit more gently.

"I had nothing to do with it," Seymour said.

"Actually, we think the farplane exploded onto it," Yuna said.

"Into it," Rikku said.

Seymour shrugged. He didn't do it, it wasn't his problem, and for now it didn't have to concern him.

"We thought you might know something about it," Yuna said.

"Why?" he asked. "I don't know where I am right now."

"So, you wouldn't know anything about the Guado magic?"

"I know we can do magic," he said.

"I don't think we're going to get anywhere," Paine said. This was like talking to a duck raised by moles. Of course it could fly, but it had no idea how or what was involved. It had lots of useless information about dirt, though.

The three girls looked at each other. Seymour stared dejectedly at his hand.

"We're… We're going up to the bridge—"

"This doesn't come off, does it?" he asked.

"…It's bolted on," Rikku said.

"Mmh," he muttered. Obviously he needed time to think by himself.

Quietly, the girls sidled out of the room and closed the door. It was horribly disappointing. If he'd tried to fireball them all and they fought him until he was unconscious, they'd have at least felt they'd done something.

"Um, Paine," Yuna whispered. The silence was too tense to talk normally.

"Yeah?" Paine asked, with a far off look in her eyes and a far off tone to her voice. Apparently she didn't think the silence was that oppressive.

She was thinking. No one knew what to do when she was thinking. Paine was someone who could think about too many different things. Yuna was simple. Rikku was simpler. Seymour… You could never really tell if he was thinking or just watching. Or both.

And that was what Paine was thinking about. She'd never known Seymour. She wasn't there at the wedding, or under the temple or inside sin or anywhere else. She'd never seen him… in power. The regal way he carried himself. She'd never seen any of those things. She'd seen the man who, with nothing else available, would defend himself with his shoes.

But Paine had known Nooj, and Baralai, and Gippal, and she'd been in that forgotten crack between politics and military. Not everyone says what they think, and there was a lot Seymour wasn't saying. He had a good poker face, and he was polite, but somewhere in his life he'd lifted his own weight (and it had been a sudden change in his life, considering the stretch marks). If he wanted to, he could punch his way through most walls. He was like a big dog that sits and watches you. As you get close to it, it doesn't move at all. Most people are afraid of those dogs. Sometimes, it is sitting there, waiting to attack you. Sometimes, it's had a few too many kicks in the face to forget, but still hopes you'll give it a cookie.

"Um… you said if we didn't get a doctor soon, we'd—someone would have to cut his hand off…" Yuna said.

"Good thing we got him in time, then."

"You didn't mention that we'd still have to do it," Yuna said. "…Paine?"

"He's hiding a lot more than he's letting on," she said. "We need to get to the bridge though."

"Why?" Rikku asked.

"First, he's going to have to get in a talkative mood," Paine said, as they walked to the elevator. "Second, we need to know what's going on, and he doesn't. Then we can see what he's hiding."

Rikku and Yuna looked at each other as the elevator began to move. Sentences just weren't making sense anymore.

………………..

"Any change?" Yuna asked as they wandered onto the bridge.

"We've had reports of things eating people. But mostly they've eaten machina they didn't seem to like," Buddy said.

"What have been eating machina?" Rikku asked.

"Don't know," Brother answered.

"They ate my commspheres!" Shinra complained.

"You'll get 'em back eventually," Rikku said.

"That's not the point," Shinra said.

"We've got short range audio only now," Buddy said.

"Okay, you know that 'Complicated Guado Magic,' Yuna?" Paine asked. "Now would be a good idea to explain it."

"…That's just it," Yuna said. "The fayth said Guado magic was complicated."

"Any details?" Paine asked.

"Just… the Guado people keep the farplane safe… and the heart of the Guado Kings shape it. That's all I got."

"Looking at one bad heart attack," Brother said.

"I think they meant what's in your heart, as in your mind," Shinra said.

Everyone froze. You could hear dust falling.

"His mind is eating people!" Rikku suddenly squealed.

"Actually, the reports say they stopped that hours ago. They're just sittin' around now," Buddy said.

"They ate my commspheres!" Shinra complained.

"We need to find someone to talk to," Yuna said. "Someone who knows what's going on." She didn't voice the overall opinion that no one really thought of Seymour's mind just sitting around.

"Who?" Rikku asked. "We can't find LeBlanc."

"And I doubt New Yevon or The Youth League or anyone else will want our help," Paine said. "Or our questions."

"That really leaves only one person," Yuna said.

"Oh, no," they all complained.


	7. Chapter 7

Rumor is fact with all the truth strained out of it. Truth is heavy, and Rumor is light. It is so light, in fact, that it's the fastest thing there is in the world. It's faster than sound, faster than light, faster than thought.

Rumor is only an offensive weapon, though. It's too light to defend with. Things can go through it, even other rumors.

The problem is, you can't defend with Truth either. It can't be shaped or warped or changed. It has to be pure truth, or it cracks, and all that's left are the pieces.

Rumor has to be free. But truth needs to be kept.

………………………

Seymour stared at his hand.

_No one ever asks. No one ever asks 'What are we going to do with you' or 'Well, do you WANT to be in charge?' or even 'Would you like a new hand, or not?'_

It would have been polite, at least. Then again, if his arm just…ended… people probably wouldn't think too highly of that.

But it was his hand. He didn't want some clunky bunch of metal replacing it. He didn't… Well, he didn't want to care what other people thought.

This was his best hand, too. It was practically his favorite hand. He did everything with this hand.

He looked out the small window of the room. One way or another, he felt, he was going to be sick. His body was still working off the drugs and basic wooziness from the doctor. Looking out over the sea brought back memories he'd hoped would find the decency to go away.

Yuna could certainly make it miserable being a prisoner. He hoped that was the intention of all this. If not, she had really screwed up. But then, what else would she want from him?

……………….

Donna stood on the roof of her house. It was easier to think up there. Plus, although the creatures followed her about, they seemed to prefer the water and swim about under her house. The roof was a good getaway. She could think, and not about them.

At first, they had taken offense to those who threw rocks at them, and looked at them in fear. This had put a tiny dent in the population, but bigger dents—and especially holes—in the bridgework.

Once people found that if you ignored them—or at least looked at them without being afraid or angry, they were essentially very large goldfish: decorative and very useless.

When Donna had gone down to the bridges and walked, or took a boat, they had followed. Occasionally one would pop its head out the water and stare at her. Then it would see her glaring at it and go back under.

She knew what they were. She could feel the memories when they were too close. That was another reason the roof was so inviting.

She had never thought about things that way until now. She'd never considered it important. It was, after all, almost twenty years ago. She also knew she couldn't explain why they were there to anyone. They'd get mad. They were already mad, but no one wanted to get eaten, so no one voiced it.

She had told Bartello. He wasn't anyone. He was good at keeping secrets most of the time because he wasn't very imaginative. He never really spoke unless he was worried about Donna. She had told him everything easy fine so he wasn't worried, and didn't voice much of anything.

Donna just stood there. Bartello did what he did best: he guarded. She didn't need to be guarded, and the things seemed to watch out for themselves. But somewhere, somehow, sometime, something would need guarding, and he'd be ready to guard it once he knew what it was.

The creatures kept swimming under her house. They paid him no mind, because he paid them none.

…………

Seymour was just starting to get used to his situation and was trying to learn as much as he could in order to escape.

A long time ago, someone had taught him to stand up for himself. No one had ever taught him to back down.

The room just outside the one he'd been left in had held a giant machina, full of pieces, and roaring with noise. It covered most of the walls.

Seymour had stood there, waiting for it to do something. It didn't. It took a long, cautious while for him to figure that out.

Whatever it was, it wasn't made as a weapon. Although, with Machina, it's often hard to tell.

Just after he'd started up the stairs to leave, the entire ship jerked, throwing him backwards.

He was now damn sure that the flying box was out to kill him.

………………..

People in Kilika had soon learned to get on with their lives. A few people were repairing the docks, and the creatures apparently had no intentions of keeping their destruction permanent.

It had seemed like it was going to be such a quiet day until the Gullwings showed up.

The creatures were the first to notice the newcomers, but the townspeople all turned to watch immediately as the things shot out of the water and climbed onto the dock.

Paine pulled out her sword immediately. Yuna pulled out her guns, but didn't aim them. Rikku tried greeting them.

The three looked at Rikku and seemed to blink. It was hard to tell what creatures formed of darkness were doing sometimes.

Paine noticed their reactions and put her sword away.

Two of the creatures jumped back in the water and swam back to circle the hut.

Yuna put her guns away.

The third creature sat down. It didn't ignore her like it ignored the other girls.

Paine attempted the best she could manage of sneaking past it that high heels would allow.

The creature shifted its gaze from the two. It stayed by Yuna.

Paine kept going. It let her.

Rikku followed. It let her.

Yuna took a step forward. It sat up and growled at her.

She took a step back. It sat down again, ignoring the others completely now.

"We won't take long!" Paine yelled.

Somehow, staring at something with teeth as the only truly consistently solid shapes on it, it wasn't all that comforting.

……………….

"I know why you're here," Donna said. She was on the roof. The Gullwings had wandered in and found her there, after looking everywhere else. Donna wasn't exactly hiding, but she gave no help in finding her when they came in the house.

She wasn't facing them. Bartello was watching her, and not looking at the two Gullwings. Donna was watching the water.

"Leave them alone, and they're harmless. Don't threaten them, and don't be afraid." There was a long pause as she turned slightly. "And I guess don't be Yuna."

"We were actually wondering if you'd heard any reports from anywhere else," Paine said, thinking about what she'd said. Seymour didn't like threats. But he didn't like fear. That was odd. He didn't like Yuna, and he was wary of the others. He probably didn't want them dead, but these things didn't work that way. They worked like fiends. They were exaggerated emotions and memories. They went beyond what was there. Hopefully. "You seem to collect news sometimes."

"Bevelle has been evacuated," Donna said. "No one knows where to. Bikanel Island is almost deserted. Luca's a ghost town, a large one. Some of the Guado are holding up in the Thunderplains hotel, but they don't feel very safe. The Ronso are having trouble. They won't leave the one around there alone and it's been scaring several. They killed all the monkeys in Zanarkand, and Isaruu ran away screaming like a little girl I heard."

"So, they're everywhere?" Rikku asked.

"The calm land is covered in fiends which are much nastier than they used to be, but there's none of these things there. Or on Beseid. The river's clear of them and there's only one from there to Macalania, I think."

"But no one's gotten rid of them," Paine said. Key points, key events probably. But why here? What did Seymour do here… with Donna? Were they lovers before? She cringed at the thought, but Donna and Bartello weren't looking.

"What?" Rikku asked.

"Nothing, I'm scaring myself," Paine answered.

"Macalania had to wait one out, but no. They can be intangible to blows if they wish. And don't get too close. I don't think they like you enough."

"Why are they here?" Paine asked. "They're circling your house."

"I'm used to them," Donna answered.

"That doesn't answer my question."

"She doesn't have to," Bartello butted in.

"Who asked you?" Rikku said.

"It's not up to me to say," Donna said. "Tell him I was never angry at him for me."

"Angry abou—" Rikku started.

"You know?" Paine asked.

"The rumor going around is that he's back, and these things are trying to kill him. They're looking for him, they say. And that Yuna's got him somewhere to kill him herself. She got him away after they tore off his entire right arm and threw him off a cliff."

"It wasn't his arm, it was his hand and it was the lef—" Rikku said.

Paine waved her hand at her to cut her off.

"Everyone's heard it," Donna said. "A lot of refugees are coming here, most are in the temple. The Guado are terrified, especially."

"Well, don't let anything happen to 'em," Rikku said.

There was a long silence from both Donna and Bartello. "Ah." There was more silence, not quite as long. "Make sure you tell him."

"One more question," Paine said.

"I'll tell you anything else I hear," Donna said.

"Where's a good clothing store around here?" Paine asked.

……………………….

She was over her head. She had no real clue what was going on and how to piece anything together when he was obviously hiding so much.

Sure, she could threaten or torture information out of him, but that would be counterproductive. Besides, he might not know at all.

"Damn," she said. They were running out of time, too. They promised Yuna they wouldn't be too long.

She had to give in, this mystery wasn't for her alone.

"What do you think he'd want to wear?" she asked Rikku, who just shrugged and didn't stop bouncing.


	8. Chapter 8

Seymour was frightened.

He was stuck on this metal flying box.

After it had tried to kill him on the stairs near the giant metal machina leviathan, he'd made it along the hallway to the elevator. That was when he discovered everything was written in Al Behd. He couldn't tell 'Danger' from 'Deck.' The elevator was about as friendly as the stairs.

He'd sent himself to the same floor several times due to his newfound illiteracy, and none of his options seemed promising. On one floor were some bedrooms, a subject which he'd never had any interest in, no matter the contents. People inside bedrooms barely concerned him, and that was only if they were stealing things or were dead. Or, of course…

The bedroom also had a bar run by a very hyper hypello, whom no one had told it was okay to feed Seymour. That meant he was hungry and miserable.

There was a kid in the hallway in the next floor, poking at a machina. He immediately hit another button after that. Four factors labeled that area a danger zone to Seymour. First, he had no idea about anything about Al Behd other than that they used Machina and apparently a different language. Second, the fact that he couldn't read it probably meant he couldn't speak it. Third, due to his past actions after he'd died and… well, lost it completely… he didn't think he'd be very popular. Fourth, there was that exploding thing about machina. Unless he knew exactly what it did, and that it wouldn't hurt him, he didn't want to be near machina.

The last level was the roof. Someone had painted intimidating designs and colors on the outside of the monstrosity he was in. It also looked a lot less box-like.

There was no one here and it was as much of outside as he was going to get for now. It was the best place to be so far.

……..

He was sitting on the top of the thing now. He wasn't free of it. That was all he wanted. Come what may, angry mob or giant magical monster. He'd rather take those on than Yuna. Smiling Yuna… confusing Yuna… Yuna the manipulator… Yuna the deceiver…

Seymour jerked himself out of that train of thought. It was heading for a bridge that had been rigged with dynamite.

He wasn't safe physically; he shouldn't go hurting himself mentally…that job belonged to other people.

He sighed and leaned back, bracing himself with his hands. He concentrated on the wind on his face and forced himself to ignore the fact that he couldn't feel his hand, even though it slipped away from him several times. It was impossible to grip anything properly with it.

He tried to focus on not focusing. Somewhere, in his mind, in everyone's mind, there was some neat dark space to go for a while, to not think of anything. He had to find it.

That's what he'd been told in Macalania. He realized he hadn't done so in years, and then he realized why. He'd decided it was just a way of disillusioning yourself. It was lying with nothing.

He sighed again. Stupid mind.

His eyes shot open as he heard the door open.

He rolled over, a move that would have been impressive, had his hand not slipped and sent him scrabbling for a hold on the smooth metal as he determinedly fixed his gaze on the person stepping out of the door.

His hand lost its battle and gravity got extra points as his head met the metal. This was not turning out to be a good day.

"You need help?" Paine asked, walking over to him.

He sat up and they just looked at each other. She recognized the look. The creatures had that look to them as they looked at her and Rikku. It was that shy dog look. He'd rather have a cookie, and he'd be happy if she ignored him, but part of him was on the alert in case she was there to kick him. He'd rather run away, but he didn't forget he had teeth.

"Sorry," she said, and backed away. She wasn't sorry, not for anything. Frankly, if the world weren't in danger, she wouldn't give a damn what he did, or even if he were there. She just didn't want to be a threat, and that wasn't something Paine was able to admit.

He stood up, but still watched her for any hostility.

"It's cold up here," she said.

"I am used to cold," he said.

"Right, you were… something… at Macalania temple," she said.

"High Priest." For someone with such haughtiness in his voice, it was just a statement. It was like saying the sky was blue.

Screw it, Paine decided. Someone else could be polite; she'd be Paine. "Get inside. You're still going to freeze."

He turned, looking at something in the wind. She noticed he kept her in his peripheral vision, in case she made a sudden move. He turned back to her soon, and sighed. "This…" What exactly was this thing called? It was a giant flying weapon that you held people captive in as far as he knew. There had to be a word for it. "…thing… makes me uncomfortable." He hung his head slightly and gently moved his hand forward. "Lead on, then."

Paine turned around as she raised one eyebrow. She wasn't used to this. She was used to following others or telling them their orders sucked. She didn't lead.

She wandered to the doors, hearing his quiet footsteps as he followed her.

He said nothing as he followed her into the elevator.

"I wanted to talk with you about a few things," Paine said.

"I have no power to stop you," he answered.

Paine stopped herself just in time. _Yeah, dipshit,_ she told herself. _He's not going to think he's in prison, what with Yuna having a pissing contest and making sure he can't leave. _ This wasn't the time to argue with either him or herself about this.

Time to start over. Time to start at all. Damnit, he could be so cynical while sounding proud of himself. Was he intentionally confusing?

"Donna wanted me to deliver a message," Paine said, leading him out of the elevator. Two could play at this game. Hopefully. Or maybe they'd just confuse each other until one didn't know which way up was.

He just nodded at her.

"Damnit, have an opinion or something!" she demanded.

"I hope she is well," he answered. "I hope she is being treated kindly, and I wonder if she and Bartello are married yet. I also hope she bears no grudges against me."

"That's it?"

"We were not exactly close," Seymour said. "What is it you want from me?"

Paine backed away. That was a threat. She kept forgetting this wasn't just another freeloader on the airship. She kept forgetting she wasn't famous for solving problems with him. She'd grown used to that.

"I am hoping whatever it is you have in store for me, you get it over with quickly, rather than beating around the bush," Seymour added. He was angry now. His muscles flexed slightly. Hidden under giant sleeves and skirts, no one would have noticed. But half-clothed and slightly unkempt, he'd traded his regality in for proof that if he wanted, he could take someone's head off with one hand and put the other straight through the wall. He suddenly looked like a savage that could eat Hypello for breakfast.

Paine blinked as some tiny thought kicked her brain and turned to finally listen to the pipsqueak idea. It dawned on her that he was waiting for her to make the first move. That was probably to her advantage.

"We're not going to do anything with you," she said, slowly edging down the hallway again. .

"I don't believe you," he said, calming down slightly.

"Then don't," she retorted. "Tell me what happened between you and Donna and I'll tell you what she said. Honest." She started down the hallway, giving him no choice but to follow..

He had that wry smile on his face. He was giving away more than he thought. As long as he knew what was going on, everything was fine with him, even if someone intended to kill him. The world was supposed to be against him. It was surprises he didn't like.

She led him into the bedroom. It was still uninteresting. Barkeep freaked out and started his strange Hypello dance. He'd hidden before and Seymour hadn't noticed.

Paine put her face in her hand. "I told you, he's not going to do anything," she complained to the Hypello.

It backed away and continued dancing strangely.

"This day must have really sucked," Paine said. "Look, Barkeep, just give him something to eat…um…what do they eat in Guadosalam…?" She asked herself, moving her hand to her hair and resting her elbow on the counter as she sat down.

Seymour let out a noise that could have been a chuckle. Either he was unused to real laughter, or he felt too intimidated by someone to be confident enough to really laugh.

It was something that needed to change, Paine decided. But not by her, she wasn't good at cheering people up.

"I appreciate the thought, but I spent two-thirds of my life in Macalania," Seymour said. "Ever since… the roads cleared enough, they've been selling anything with meat and enough spices to either pickle it enough that it would never go bad, or cover up the fact that it already had."

"Give him anything that fits that description," Paine said.

"I assume I should sit down about now," Seymour said sarcastically. "Or do I eat standing while you sit?"

"Look, this place isn't a prison!" Paine said.

"And what would you do if I managed to leave?"

"You think we're here to give you orders? Here's a damn order! Stop being such and arrogant ass!"

Seymour silently gave her a bow before pulling up a seat and sitting calmly.

"Polite butthead," Paine muttered, then slapped herself, realizing her could hear her. She'd told Yuna to leave for that exact purpose. "Tell me about you and Donna and I'll tell you what she said."

"You dragged me down here to be threatened by you and a hypello for that?" he asked.

She turned and glared at him, then realized it wasn't an accusation.

"Some people say life is a test," he said. He stared at the counter as he spoke. All that haughtiness was gone, but there was still his voice. Maybe the years of being stuck with dead jerks who just turned into bigger jerks had colored his attitude, which in turn had colored his voice. Maybe sounding like a dangerous snob came with being rich.

"I'm wondering where I chose the wrong answer in mine, and I hope Donna didn't choose the wrong answer in helping me," he continued. He closed his eyes. He didn't want to see Paine while he remembered. One danger was enough, and he'd rather face a memory. "It's not what you think."

It was dark. It was always dark in his room. His room didn't have any windows. Eventually, he grew to like the dark. It was friendly. The light was where you saw things you shouldn't see. Things came out of the light to hurt you.

"I was… ten, maybe eleven at the time. I know she was twelve. She hated me right from the start."

"_Where's all your toys?" Donna demanded. "I wanna play with toys!"_

"_I don't have any toys," he said._

"_How can you not have toys?" Donna complained, her hands on her hips. "What do you play with? Walls?"_

"_I don't play," he replied._

"Her father was rich, owned and controlled a lot of trade. He had a daughter he didn't want and my father had a son he didn't want. One was rich and the other had a country. He must have been so mad at both of us…

"We were betrothed, our parents couldn't wait to trade us for a chance at money."

_"I don't want to marry you!" she said, turning around and crossing her arms._

_"I had a doll once," he said._

_"Boys can't play with dolls!"_

_"Why not!"_

_"Dolls are for girls!"_

"You can have it if I find it," he said.

"I don't want your dumb doll! I wanna go play outside!" she said.

"What's outside like?"

"You don't go outside?"

"No."

"You don't have candles?"

"No."

"It didn't take her long to find out I hated it there. And why. Then she asked me why I didn't just run away. She promised to help me. And she kept that promise. I don't know what she did, but the guards never found me. I ran away. The next time we saw each other, I was Maester and she was a summoner, and there were crowds and blitzball tournaments between us.

"I've always wondered… what happened to her after that. And if she hated me for it."

"She says she doesn't," Paine said. "And never did. I didn't know what she was talking about when she told me to tell you."

That was when the food arrived. Seymour thanked the thing, but it freaked out again.

Seymour tried to ignore it while he struggled with his grip on the fork.

Paine tried to ignore the noise as it slipped again and again and she tried to think.

Only one of them succeeded.

"Do you need help?" she asked.


	9. Chapter 9

The entire city of Kilika paused. Something was going on, they could tell. What they couldn't tell was what.

The creatures poked their heads out of the water and exchanged confused glances as well.

Then they disappeared.

Everyone stopped again. Some were wondering what had happened. Some were wondering why there wasn't even a 'piff.'

Donna was the first to move. She bent down on the roof and stared out at the water.

There was nothing there.

She leaned over.

There was still nothing there.

Someone else checked under the dock.

Humanity would have died long ago if it weren't for the gifts it had been given by nature to deal with disasters.

One by one, people began to shrug.

………………………………….

Things were starting to look up, or down, depending on how you looked at it.

The demons were in the lower levels were flooded, both literally and figuratively. Some idiot had decided to have a fight with an invincible creature right in front of the controls for the Via Purifico.

The windows on the first floor windows had become fountains.

Nine people. He could only find nine people… alive.

He should have expected it. When the church wasn't stupid, it was killing people.

Now he had to find a way not to do either with only nine people.

"Does anyone have any idea what is happening to the world?" Baralai asked.

There was a chorus of 'no's until someone saved his aching head and said 'maybe.'

"What do you mean by maybe?" Baralai asked.

The speaker was some guard who had the wrong type of weapon for his uniform—or vice versa.

"I heard Yuna brought Seymour back," the guard said.

"Why would she do that?" Baralai asked.

"I heard the Al Behd wanna make a machina or something out of him."

"Does any of this make any sense?" Baralai asked. Did all the sense in the world drain away when Guadosalam imploded?

"I heard they've got some deal going on between them," someone else spoke up. "I thought it sounded stupid."

"Those things are trying to kill him!"

"No, they're after her!"

"Did every one of you hear that he's back?"

"I heard she killed him," someone said as they all nodded.

"Where did you hear all this?" Baralai asked.

"Down at the pub."

"St. Bevelle Bar."

"Er… there was this place where girls take their clothes off… I wanted to see if they were okay, honest!"

"You went for drinks?"

"What would you do if everyone was getting eaten?" the main guard asked.

The thing was, Baralai was thinking a good strong drink would be good about now.

………………….

Seymour had been taught a great many things throughout his life. People skills weren't one of them, but then, the monks had never had any real problem with him to consider that. Table manners were.

Most table manners hinge upon holding the fork. One never realizes how hard this is if you can neither feel the fork, nor hold onto it in the slightest.

He had a choice: give a stranger a chance to help him, or forgo table manners almost completely.

Were the stranger not wholly in league with someone who'd played him like a yo-yo, the fork would not have been abandoned upon the counter.

Table manners or not, he was still polite.

Paine sighed. Nooj had needed help adjusting and now Seymour needed some. The world would implode and turn into a purple chocobo before he'd ever let her though.

She wondered if she should ask more questions. He said he'd talk if anyone wanted to know.

But: who knew how many more demons that'd make? How much of his life was significant to all this?

Both Paine and Seymour looked up and they noticed the hypello dive behind the bar. Then they turned, as they noticed the door opening. They both stood up immediately, seeing an enraged Yuna coming through the door, followed by a panicking Rikku.

"Yunie!" Rikku shouted, grabbing at her friend's arm and missing.

"Call them off!" Yuna yelled, as Seymour tried to back away into the counter. "I said call them off!" she repeated. Bad guys weren't allowed to be confused.

"Call what off?" he asked, trying not to panic. He really, really missed the lizards. They didn't play with their food.

"Yuna—" Paine said.

Seymour tried to dodge away from her.

Yuna put her hand on the counter and blocked his escape.

He tried to dodge her. He looked around. He was cornered. The last time he was threatened and cornered… Yuna was there… that didn't end well, as he remembered.

"Call off your… your things!"

Seymour gripped the counter behind him with shaky hands. What was he going to do? Lying would get him in trouble, saying yes got him killed last time. Besides, he was being accused to stuff her never did. At least, he thought he'd never… did something with… things.

"There's big black things running around all over Spira and it's your fault!" Yuna yelled.

"Yunie—"

"_It's your fault!"_

No one heard the quiet creaking sound. Yuna was still yelling.

"There's a big black… hole or something where Guadosalam was, and it's getting bigger! Those things of yours are eating people! There's one in the Youth League headquarters and it won't go away and it ate three people!"

"Yuna—" Paine tried, but Yuna wasn't done.

"Bevelle's flooded with them and they killed all the New Yevon priests! There's a huge one knocking down Zanarkand! There's even one on Mt. Gagazet! They're killing people, and it's your fault!"

"_She's dead, and it's your fault!"_

And then someone did something stupid.

"Hey—" Paine said, tapping Seymour on the arm.

Everything had been winding Seymour tighter and tighter like a spring, and his ability to stay calm snapped like over-stretched elastic. He screamed and closed his eyes against the visions the conversation was giving him. First his hands crushed the wood of the counter as he tensed, then his hand shot out and grabbed the first thing it found.

The splinters fell through the air. You could hear each and every one of them while the three girls just stared as Seymour held his head with one hand and waited for him to let go with the other.

_"I'll make you pay!" his father yelled, his giant hands slowly squeezing around Seymour's neck. "I'll make you pay for murdering her!"_

"Seymour--?" Rikku said.

"Huh?" he muttered, slamming into reality with no mental brakes. Then he noticed he'd grabbed Yuna's neck when he'd freaked. "Aaah!" he yelped, tearing his hand away.

"Yuna, I don't think he knows what's going on," Paine finally butted in.

Seymour turned his attention to Paine. That wasn't fair! She was confusing him! They weren't supposed to pretend to take different sides! It was just Yuna and the others helped her in whatever single trick Yuna was trying to pull. Adding sides to the game wasn't fair!

"You're all confusing me," he said. Hopefully someone would at least explain the rules of the game to him, even if they cheated.

For a second, Rikku thought she saw a kindred spirit in having no idea what was going on at all.

Suddenly, the alarm went off, not at all polite enough to wait for the fight to finish, and it was always so rude to break up fights, Yuna thought.

"Don't ever touch me," Seymour said. Hopefully that would explain… something. He wanted to think Yuna deserved that—just a little scare—but she was trying his mind up in a Freudian knot, he had no idea anymore.

It's not a good idea to give people you don't like hints. They know how to put the opposite into effect.

Yuna smacked Seymour across the face and stormed off out the door. It had more effect on him that just 'Don't tell me what to do.'

Paine reached for Seymour's face. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but it failed utterly. He tried to back away and tripped over his chair. She shook her head and left.

Rikku stared at him and then shrugged and went after the others.

…………………….

The creatures, all over Spira sat at attention. One in Macalania stopped digging. Two stopped fighting. The one in Luca woke up, ignoring several people as they tried to sneak by.

Then they all let out a long howl.

When it ended, the sky began to darken, and the sun had nothing to do with it.

…………………….

"Yuna, what was all that about?" Paine demanded, nearly missing the elevator.

"Wait for me!" Rikku yelped.

Neither girl on the elevator stopped it for her.

"Things shouldn't work like that," Yuna said, storming down the hall. "He got what he deserved, every time he did something cruel. That's how things are supposed to work. Those things are killing people and it's his fault and he should get rid of them!"

"And you don't think you might be making things worse by screaming at him?" Paine asked.

"Yunie!"

"You don't know him Paine!" Yuna retorted. "He's playing some trick on you or pretending he doesn't know what's going on. He's up to something."

"So what if he's up to something?" Paine asked. "What exactly is he going to do? No one wants him around, he won't crash the airship because he can't fly. He can't summon."

"You don't know him!" Yuna said.

"Yunie?"

"You don't either!" Paine shot back.

"(Ooo, catfight!)" Brother exclaimed.

"Are you done fighting over him?" Shinra asked.

"He's evil!" Yuna said.

"He's an arrogant prat!" Paine said.

"He's no fun," Rikku said, just to join in.

"Well, if you're through you can go clean up a riot. Maybe if you hurry you can stop what's left of it," Buddy said.

The three girls looked at each other.

"Let's go," Yuna said, not very proudly.

…………….

Never underestimate anyone. You may feel bad that you have wasted money on an extra fire-pit or acid-drop, but you'd feel worse if anyone got through your traps.

However, the best trap is not to make someone leave in the first place. You don't need to lock the door if no one is going to use it.

No one has figured this out. This is because if you want to force someone to stay somewhere, you don't make it comfortable. It's only logic.

But no one read the fine print on the universe. It signs you up, you can't volunteer. And logic does not apply to it.


	10. Chapter 10

"Okay," Baralai started. "Can anyone tell me what is happening without giant lizards, machinas destroying cities, or psychic flying things?"

…………………….

Riots are never broken up. It doesn't count as a riot otherwise. Riots have reasons the same way tidal waves do. Because something big happened, a riot happened. And that's all there is to it.

This was a riot, not a fight. The Gullwings arrived just in time to be too late.

They had followed a terrified hotel manager to the Thunderplains hotel.

There were two groups of Guado there; several were cringing on the stairs, mostly women and children. The other group was nearly a dozen men huddled behind one who held a bloody chair. He was only bothered by the situation once he saw Yuna. Then he was slightly put off.

There were bodies on the floor. None of them looked like they had any chance of getting up. Some were human, some were Guado. They were all very definitely dead.

Miraculously, someone had managed to set a table on fire.

"They started it," the one with the chair said.

"Who's going to clean up this mess?" the hotel manager asked.

"What happened here?" Yuna asked.

"Someone said something, and then someone else said something, and then humans were yelling and Guado were yelling back, and someone pulled out a knife, and then he grabbed a chair out from under someone else, and then I ran out the back door," the hotel manager said. "Everything's ruined! And how am I going to clean this place up?"

"The Guado handle Guado problems," the one with the chair said. The crowd behind him tried to back away as he gripped the handles tighter. "This was our problem. You shouldn't have come."

"Well, then maybe you can solve your own little money problem!" the hotel manager said.

"Hi there!" Rikku chirped, and tried to pat a little kid. It was one of those adorable little kids with huge creepy eyes and large soft toys that never said anything and seemed to have no specified gender. The sole purpose of such kids is to look cute until they grow up.

One of the females ran down the stairs and plucked the kid away and ran back to the group and tried to hide in it. The kid started to cry.

"Don't touch her!" the Guado with the chair yelled.

"Did we miss something?" Paine asked.

"You'll have to excuse Kuuna," one of the women said, pushing her way through the terrified others.

"Tida!" Kuuna yelled.

"His brother was one of the royal guards two years ago," Tida continued. "He's lost his wife in the recent disaster and he can't find her."

"Where is your brother?" Yuna asked.

"He was killed defending Lord Seymour from a summoner and her group of renegade guardians."

There was silence from the Gullwings and the manager started slowly backing out towards the door.

"But—But Seymour—" Rikku started.

"Everyone knew that!" Kuuna retorted.

"Except those outside of Guadosalam," Tida said. "It was covered up to keep the peace. He was forgiven, considering the circumstances."

"What circumstances?" Yuna asked.

"She didn't even know about what Jyscal—"

He was interrupted as a rock went flying through the window. Before the rock hit anything, he chucked the chair in the direction the rock had come from.

The girls barely had time to get out of the way as Kuuna grabbed the smoldering table and charged outside.

The Gullwings ran to follow him outside where there were two men who had survived, though not unscathed, from the first fight and were back for another.

"What's going on?" Yuna asked.

"They said it was our fault Seymour was back," Kuuna said.

Seeing they were suddenly outnumbered and out-weaponed, the men fled. Seeing something to do that finally made sense and was immensely simple, the Gullwings took off after them.

And that is when things got complicated.

Kuuna was left behind to wave the table at the brawlers. The brawlers didn't want anything to do with guns. The Gullwings wanted the Guado safe.

And Seymour wanted off the airship.

Seymour didn't wait to look around at the Thunderplains. He saw Yuna running toward him and took off as fast as he could.

He didn't care if it was raining. He didn't care which direction he ran. Just so long as Yuna wasn't there.

The brawlers were torn in their decision of what to do and decided to multi-task.

As the girls ignored them, one grabbed a rock and they followed Seymour.

They say fear gives one wings. They never said anything about steering.

The huge black mass surrounding what was once Guadosalam began to uncurl. Spikes rose from it's back and a head on a long neck reared up. Seymour managed to stop in front of it by tripping over a large rock.

Seymour stood up, turned around, noticed Yuna, and began to panic. He turned back to the creature, and focused on backing away as it reached for him with a long claws and taloned hand. It was barely a hand, but it was more hand than anything else.

"Go to hell!" one of the forgotten brawlers yelled and heaved the rock at him. Then he and his partner ran away.

The Gullwings skidded to a halt as they watched the creature rear back for another swipe, as the rock struck with a 'thud'. He clutched the back of his head and stumbled.

People think miracles are rare. Miracles happen all the time. Just because something bad happens, doesn't make it not a miracle.

Holding his head, Seymour stumbled backwards and winced against the sudden pain and tried to reorient himself.

The creature swiped again, missing due to his stumbling and slicing his arm instead of his chest.

Then Seymour tripped over the rock that had hit him.

Just because it's a miracle, doesn't mean something stupid happens.

The thing stalked closer. The part that would best be called its nose poked closer to him and through one semi-closed eye, he looked at it.

It wasn't just a mistake. It was several mistakes. He didn't know not to get near the demons. He couldn't have. Someone should have made sure he never left the airship. Someone should have made sure he didn't want to. No one had explained to the idiots not to injure him.

"Seymour, run!" Yuna yelled, as Seymour tried to stand, still holding his head.

Seymour's legs buckled at the knees.

He grabbed his head at his temples. He'd forgotten his injury. He couldn't see the creature anymore.

_His trembling hands let go of the knife._

_Whatever madness had driven him to protect himself this way ebbed away, and suddenly left Seymour unprotected from the aftermath._

_As the knife fell away, so did his father, sliding to the floor. It took so long for him to land. _

_Seymour could do nothing but watch. _

_As he watched, he saw his hands._

_There was blood all over his hands. It was everywhere. How could there be so much blood? How could someone bleed so much from one knife wound?_

_He'd gotten less blood on himself fighting monsters in Macalania._

_He'd never killed outright like this._

_He'd always waited for something else to make the first move. He could never justify death without that. Never before._

_He felt dizzy._

_It was too much. He'd lost what had driven him to his actions, and now his whole world was collapsing._

_The world began to spin. Colors began to melt together._

_He could hear Trommel's footsteps outside. _

_He was already caught!_

_Just before he fainted, he remembered throwing up._

The girls were frozen in place as they watched. The creature just seemed to be having a rather nasty stare-down with Seymour. It was definitely winning.

Paine merely thought it was the concussion that caused him to vomit on the ground, but she was sure it was the monster a second later.

_He was choking._

_He couldn't see though the tears welling up in his eyes._

_His father's long fingers were around his neck and squeezing._

_He never knew if his father ever intended to kill him when he did this, but either way, he never succeeded. His father always seemed proud for torturing his own child._

_He couldn't see._

_He couldn't breathe._

_His small hands futily tried to pull his father's hands away._

_The fingers loosened slightly._

_It was just enough for him to manage to scream._

_"Mommy!"_

Paine was speechless.

Rikku stopped bouncing so suddenly she fell over in the mud.

For the first time ever, Yuna was the only one thinking straight.

She ran at the thing, guns out and firing as rapidly as possible.

The creature jumped back in surprise and Seymour was released from its spell.

Both of them panicked.

The creature stomped off in fear and Seymour was again off like a shot.

"Hey!" Yuna yelled.

It was just too damn hard to save someone who thought the only reason to keep you alive was to torture you until they were bored.

"Did he just say what I though he said?" Rikku asked, brushing the mud off her skirt.

Paine sighed. "We better go after him."

……………….

It was dark here.

Wherever here was.

Since when did physical geography stop following the laws of physics? Metaphorical geography was allowed to, but not physical geography.

Seymour stopped his running once he realized the landscape wasn't where he left it.

He had to think. He had to be careful about thinking. Several of his last bright ideas hadn't had good results.

As the adrenaline wore off, the concussion wore on.

Seymour realized it didn't matter if he couldn't see anything around him. He couldn't see straight in the first place. He wasn't sure if he was still standing or not. He still felt nauseous and only then did he remember to wipe his mouth.

Then he heard laughter behind him and froze.

He recognized that laugh.

He hadn't heard it since the day he killed his father. And he hadn't heard it before then.

Seymour spun around, trying to face the voice.

"What are you going to do, run away?" the voice asked, again behind him.

"Jyzzkcal?" Seymour slurred.

"You always were an idiot," the voice said. "You're in my world now. Your mind shaped the farplane before, and now that you're alive, my mind shapes it. Welcome to my little patch of the farplane.

"My mind, by the way, is nowhere near as much of a mess as yours."

"Interestingzingrl…" Seymour mumbled before passing out.

"Well, damn."

……………………..

"Hmh?" Seymour muttered, his eyes fluttering open. The landscape had changed again. Or maybe it was just a lot fuzzier.

No, there was stuff in this landscape. It had definitely changed.

Then he realized he was still covered in mud.

Pushing himself off of whatever he was leaning on, he shook his head to throw off as much of the mud as possible.

He heard people screaming.

Apparently there were people are here.

Now who would be… oh, shit.

"Hey," someone muttered.

"Whwr?" he asked.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" someone asked.

"Um…" he started, hoping he would be able to enunciate properly. "Nine… But you have three wrists."

Seymour blindly crawled up the wall, which, to him, wouldn't stop moving.

"Nnngrhh…" he muttered. "I do wish you would not stare at me like that."

"Your eyes are closed," Brother complained.

"And you're not even looking at us," Shinra retorted.

"I know when people are staring at me."

The three Al Behd exchanged glances and then returned them. They all turned around and pretended to do something.

Seymour slowly turned around to look at the bridge. He'd stayed well away from the Al Behd before. So far they seemed… a bit too clueless for punishing him, and too curious for torture.

Maybe if he thought of something to say, he'd be safe from half the crew of the… flying thing.

"How many of there are you?"


	11. Chapter 11

"What now?" Baralai asked. There was nothing to do but wait for some idiot to tell him the next crazy rumor. The rumors were so insanely impossible and stupid at the same time that Baralai was surprised they still had correct grammar these days.

"It's just me," Isaruu said.

"Do I know you?"

"I… guess not," Isaruu answered.

"Well?"

"Well what?" Isaruu asked.

"Well, what did you want with me?" Baralai asked.

"I was wondering if you were going to get the big lizard out of Zanarkand," Isaruu said.

"That's on my To Do list," Baralai said. "After figuring out what's going on, getting the creatures out of the basement, finding the rest of my guards, de-flooding the place."

"So, that's a 'no,' then, is it?" Isaruu asked.

"For the time being, yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes what?"

"What?"

"No—What the hell are we talking about?" Baralai yelled.

"I thought you knew."

"I don't know anything anymore!" Baralai continued screaming. "I don't know what these things are, what they want, where they came from—"

"I think they're Seymour's, sir."

"They—he—what?"

"Have you tried talking to them?"

"They ate seventeen people!"

"Without yelling."

Baralai sighed. He was quiet now. "No."

"Well, some might not want to talk, and the one I spoke to got angry once he realized who I was—"

"What would be the point?" Baralai asked. "They've destroyed the plumbing, flooded the first floor, ate people and furniture, and now they're trying out for Blitzball."

"Well, it's something."

"Yes, but yelling at them is something. You get eaten!"

"Well—"

"I don't even know what to do!" Baralai said. "The only reason I'm talking to you is because you keep replying!"

"Spira looks to the church and its people for hope and salvation, and they must always remember that and let nothing else keep them from it."

"Are you quoting at me?"

"Sorry, sir," Isaruu said. "I didn't know it wasn't allowed."

"Please don't, I don't need this now," Baralai paused, as if her were finished.

Isaruu got the clue and turned to leave. He'd come all the way through monsters to be confused and yelled at.

"Who said that?" Baralai asked.

Isaruu didn't turn around. "You don't know?"

"No, I don't."

Isaruu paused. "I don't either."

……………..

Seymour didn't want help. He probably would have if he thought it really was help. He didn't want any of the Gullwings near him.

Commenting on the fact that his head was bleeding didn't sway him. Commenting on the fact that the mud could get into his injury didn't sway him. Warning him that infection could lead to losing another limb just made him back away.

If he could, he'd be fine checking into a hospital. The worst they'd do there would be to kill him.

Without saying anything, he had insisted on waiting the concussion out.

Finally, when he could walk on his own, he slowly stumbled back up the stairs and into the hallway.

"Where are you going?" Yuna asked as he did his best to keep his distance from her as he passed.

Seymour stopped. He felt like a machina someone had kicked and several loose screws had gotten into the joints and made movement difficult. His head felt like a cheap and poorly set up fireworks display was going off in it while scared and drunken shoopufs were trying to escape the commotion and trampling his brain in the process. He was also tired.

That was just the new stuff. He was still trapped in a flying box with Yuna, two of her friends, had no idea what was going on, and had the bad premonition that the universe had left the gas on and would remember all too late.

"Where I belong," he said, and wandered to the elevator.

"I should go too," Paine said. "Don't look at me like that, it's a concussion, you don't cut anything off!"

Yuna and Rikku had gone white at her first statement and didn't seem to believe her second. She decided not to make a third. Paine stepped into the elevator and hit the button for Seymour.

Yuna and Rikku stood there and stared at the doors at the end of the hall.

"I should talk to Kuuna," Yuna said. "We can probably figure something out and we have the money to keep the Guado safe."

"Yunie…" Rikku said in a scared voice.

"Yeah?"

"Did he really say 'Mommy' back there?"

…………

"Looks like we're both pretty unpopular," Paine said.

Seymour said nothing. He braced himself with one hand on the side as the elevator threw his center of gravity about like a pin-pong ball. He stared at the floor and his gaze shot right trough it and was probably staring at the lucky birds that didn't manage to get sucked into the engines below the airship.

Paine glared at him. She could be ignoring him right now, but she was going out of her way to be nice and all he did was memorize bad carpeting.

"I didn't know I was supposed to reply."

The elevator stopped.

Seymour left and headed down to his room.

Paine followed after him the whole way.

"Can I see--?" she started when they were there.

"No."

"Look, fuck it. You were beaned with a rock and your arm was torn open. Now, you can have Yuna down here so she can fuck things up, or I can get Rikku down here and she can't tell first aid from fruit salad."

"I do not like the idea of any of you near my head," Seymour said. There was that regality, that haughtiness, that weird damn-well-going-to-observe-tea-time-ness in his voice and it drove her nuts.

It drove her nuts because it made things sound the way he didn't mean. It drove her nuts because he didn't care how you interpreted his words and he liked it when you mistook his voice for meaning something other than mere fact. It drove her nuts because this was not the time being politely defiant. It drove her nuts because she'd never heard anyone talk like that. It drove her nuts because she knew there was something she didn't want to think about. It drove her nuts because it drove her nuts.

"Here—Let me—Hey!—Just—Knock that off!" she told him. She reached for his chin and he turned away, gave the biggest flinches she'd ever seen, and stepped back or sideways. "Would you hold still! Just look at me!"

Uneasily Seymour forced his eyes to meet hers. He didn't like people looking at him, especially into his eyes. He didn't like being scrutinized or judged. He'd politely found something else to do or look at throughout his life and only tried it with Yuna. Now he didn't trust doing such a thing at all.

He flinched again, avoiding Paine's fingers. She'd forgotten to put her hand down.

He felt tense. He didn't like being so close. Not just physically. He thought that he could get through life with a mutual understanding of neither him nor anyone else would trample on each other's emotional lawns. Now, as he was trying not to start shaking or jumping away, she wasn't just in the middle of his lawn, but she'd brought loud music too.

"You definitely got a concussion," Paine said unhelpfully. "It seems to be going down a bit."

Seymour suddenly stepped away.

"Rikku put some stuff down here while you were out—What's your problem?" Paine asked, seeing Seymour trying to calm his intense breathing.

"I did not like that."

"You're weird," she said and turned away from him.

He looked at her, and then came to the same revelation she was still trying to remember while talking to him. It was just a fact. It wasn't an insult.

"Take your clothes off—" Paine said.

"WHAT?"

"Take them off, get in the shower, get that crap off you," Paine said. "You're covered in mud."

Seymour stood there, seemingly wondering if he'd been abducted by aliens that had the map upside-down all along.

"I don't care," she said.

"I do," he said. The statement was full of teeth and there was nothing to disguise it this time.

She could go on about how she had been in the army. She could explain how she'd help her friend though worse and more embarrassing after he'd received mechanical limbs.

"Here," she said, kicking a bag towards him. "There's some new clothes in there. Now get in the shower and wash off so I can fix that arm or I am going to drag you in there and join you."

Seymour's eyes went wide. He grabbed the bag and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door closed.

Paine sighed. He was dealing with a man who was absolutely terrified of a young woman in leather stripping and standing in a small space while hot water dripped on them both.

…………………

The creature near Gaudosalam sat up. The farplane territory the Jyscal owned was getting too close.

It had him. It almost had him. It knew he was somewhere around here.

Then she showed up.

Well, no use waiting around here to get eaten.

The creature trundled off aimlessly. It looked at the sky. It was getting darker. There were thick clouds now.

The sky didn't bother the creature. It didn't care. The atmospheric phenomenon was the same as it.

What bothered it was that it was that he was up there.

………………….

"Didn't take you long," Paine said, not turning around as Seymour came out of the bathroom, trying to dry his hair with a small towel.

Seymour didn't say anything. He kept his distance as he watched her sort through the first aid kit Rikku ad left.

"Well, she probably doesn't know what any of this is, but she can pack one of these pretty well." Paine noticed Rikku had even packed those little bandages in case someone's nose, even though if that happened, they needed a hospital, not a first aid kit. "Not get over here, you need stitches."

"I know," Seymour said.

She turned to him and glared.

He didn't care this time. He glared back.

"Then get your butt over here."

Seymour still didn't move. At the moment his arm had gone from bleeding to just oozing. But it was oozing all over the place. "You said this wasn't a prison and I said I don't like being touched. You can either let me do the stitches, or you can knock me unconscious and give me another head injury and do them yourselves."

Paine shrugged. "Suit yourself." She handed him the needle, already threaded with twine.

He gently took it from her without touching her fingertips and nodded to her.

"There's—" Paine held out a bottle. She'd turned around for two seconds to get it.

Seymour was sitting on a crate Rikku had left in the room just for that purpose and was meticulously sewing up his arm.

"Anesthetic…" Paine finished. She watched in amazement as he carefully but quickly, made every single little stitch tiny and perfect, only wincing when he had to pull the thread tight.

"Doesn't that hurt?" she asked.

Seymour paused to look as her. Then he looked at his arm, then at the stitches. "Compared to what?" He went back to sewing himself.


	12. Chapter 12

Paine sat on another crate and watched Seymour. She had floundered for conversation starters, gave up, then went into the bathroom and started a short argument about cleaning Seymour's wounds.

It wasn't easy being Paine. Suddenly someone needed something from her. He didn't ask for help, but that wasn't the point.

Yuna and Rikku were easily ignorable. The people in the cockpit were more or less furniture.

Seymour kept flicking his gaze from her, to his stitching. He flinched when she insisted on washing the wound he'd just stitched up or bandaging it. He didn't like her, and yet she was the safest thing to have a conversation with or at least ask if something was likely to explode.

She wasn't used to not being liked. Not on an individual level. Usually, people who didn't' like her ignored her and the only problem with mutual ignorance is occasionally realizing they are and bumping into each other.

Seymour didn't play by the rules, and she hated it. She hated it because she didn't think she had rules other than 'the pointy end goes towards to other guy.' She had rules. Threats were made outright in some fashion. If they weren't made, the person was more or less fine, though probably not someone you want to watch your gun. If you thought something was dangerous, you did something about it. You fainted, you wet your pants, you ran away, you hit it repeatedly until it was road pavement.

The only threat she'd made was that she'd force him to take a shower with her. After that, she'd let him have his own way. And he still thought she might try to decapitate him with a rusty razor. And yet, he wasn't acting upon it. He could punch through a wall if he didn't like the original doorway, and yet he'd always wait for the wall to make the first move.

"Today turned out to be a bit of a bummer, didn't it?" she asked.

He blinked.

She swore it was involuntary.

She sighed.

"Is there…?" she stared. Is there what? Is there anything you'd actually respond to? "…anything you want?" she asked.

There was a long silence from Seymour. "I am unused to asking for much," he said. He was still shifting his gaze. He'd never stopped. Insinuating that you'd get him something he wanted hadn't brightened his outlook on her. "Meals were planned, servants did what they wanted. Or I'd just get it myself. I liked it. Before, people didn't like me asking. They didn't like the idea of me wanting anything, or even being around."

There was a sudden knock at the door. Paine jumped and Seymour stopped sewing at watched her.

"Uh… come in," Paine said, realizing Seymour wouldn't let anything more than air in if he had a choice. And it's only be air he thought was safe air.

The door opened slowly and Yuna timidly entered the room. She closed the door as quietly as the metal contraption allowed.

Seymour did his best to hide the needle. Apparently with Yuna around, he didn't even trust himself with sharp objects. He also pretended he wasn't really shifting on the crate to gain some insignificant distance from her.

Yuna noticed none of this and approached him. She would have approached him if he had a glowing sign saying 'Yuna keep away.'

There was something timid about the way she walked and kept her hands behind her back and tried not to fidget, but that just made Seymour edgier. It seemed he'd be far more relieved if she just charged him with a large weapon. It'd certainly keep his imagination from flying off to The Forbidden Planet and returning with gruesome Souvenirs for thoughts every few seconds.

"I talked to Kuuna… I mean, there was this riot and… Kuuna's brother used to work for your father."

Paine was trying to make discreet gestures to indicate Yuna had hit a nerve with a hammer. Seymour was doing the same thing without really moving, using only his expression and the color of his face. He really needed a sign saying 'Please do not feed imagination.'

"Er… I mean… No one ever told me about your father," Yuna said.

Some color that more resembled a healthy face returned to Seymour, but he stared rather blankly and waited for the other shoe to drop, which he was sure would land on his head.

"I mean, no one told anyone what he did to you, and then they never really said much when you came back and they covered the whole thing up."

Ah. Diplomacy. Seymour knew all about that. He was starting to feel much more comfortable, which wasn't much at all with Yuna up close. Diplomacy was playing poker while not giving any indication you've changed the rules on you opponent.

"That is indeed what happened." Yuna wasn't one for insolence. Hopefully he'd live through this conversation about his father this time.

"You could have told me," Yuna said.

Seymour didn't like that. It was an accusation. He stood up and sidestepped the crate away from Paine. Yuna seemed to be shooting right through the conversation, straight on through the accusation, and soon he'd end up with something big sticking through his chest.

"What did happen?" Paine asked. If there was going to be a fight, she wanted to know which side was stupider.

"His dad liked to hit him a lot," Yuna answered in a voice that showed she had no idea how to deal with this. "And kept him locked in a closet or something."

"He locked me in my own room without any lights," Seymour corrected, still putting effort into his poker face. He didn't even want to blink wrong.

"I… I never knew," Yuna said.

"And now you do," Seymour said. Not only was there no animosity in his voice at all, but he didn't seem to see any point in the conversation anymore.

"You don't seem that bothered by it," Paine said.

"I'm not anymore," Seymour answered. "That part wasn't so bad."

"I don't understand," Yuna said.

"When you're trapped in the dark with nothing but yourself and sometimes someone who hates you, you begin to believe what they call you. You don't have any reason not to. Sometimes its worse being called a half-breed than it is to be struck, and sometimes it's worse that it's your own father than what he's actually doing."

"I don't get it," Yuna said.

Seymour realized there had been no reason to be afraid of giving something away to the enemy because it was as far above her head as the moon. He might as well have tried to explain quantum. He might as well have tried to teach her how to spell quantum; it was all the same to her. "You don't have to understand. You understand enough."

Yuna nodded and looked around for something to say, as if bits and pieces of conversations would be lying on the floor. "Um… were you ever on Baaj Island?"

"My mother and I were relocated there during a civil war."

"Then…" Yuna whispered. She puled something out of her pocket and walked over to Seymour.

Seymour didn't make it easy, rapidly walking backwards until he met a wall. Paine noticed he'd lost his grip on trying to seem calm. He seemed to be holding onto the core of whatever it was he'd steeled into his face and voice, but it was more of a prayer than an accusation now.

As usual, it all flew over Yuna's head like fluffy clouds.

"I don't think—" Paine started. Too late. Yuna wasn't paying attention anyway.

Paine winced. Yuna and Seymour were like bad alchemy. Throwing to mystery concoctions together to see what happened limited your chances of living to see the results. She opened one eye when she realized the time for loud noises had passed.

Yuna had politely backed up into the no-fire zone.

Paine decided it was safe enough to open both eyes.

Seymour was holding the old, ugly, headless doll Yuna had found. It had been left in a cold dank cave for decades, crushed by rocks, played with for years before it was lost, and at least one lizard had tried to eat it. And yet, he genuinely seemed happy. Paine didn't think that emotion registered with him anymore.

"I… I should be going," Yuna said, and turned and left.

"I… thank you," Seymour muttered before she went out the door.

They really were an alchemical reaction. Often, something exploded or burst into flames. Sometimes nothing happened. Miraculously, you hit that one change to turn radioactive waste into gold.

The only problem was that once Yuna left, Paine was the one he picked up on the threat radar.

He pocketed the doll as politely as he could. He went back to seeming untouchable with a hint of glaring.

"That's not going to work," Paine said. "I saw that."

Seymour glared more.

"What was that all about?"

"What what was all about?"

"What's all this playing at being a tough-ass. I saw you staring at Yuna. You were scared shitless!"

"And?"

"And now you look like you think you're better than me or anyone else in the room!"

"I do not think I'm better than anyone."

"Then why do you act like such a damn prat?" Paine said, stepping closer. She didn't like this damn distance thing either.

"You wouldn't understand," he said, looking for a way to sidestep while trying to keep his eyes on her. His fists clenched the metal one making a loud tap as it did.

"Bull." She put her hands on either side of him on the wall.

"Get away from me." It was polite; there was no threat in it. But he never made the first move.

"Would you look at me when I'm talking to you?"

"Get… away…"

"Make me!" Paine yelled, and grabbed his hair.

Unfortunately, Paine's only other way of dealing with people right after ignoring them and hitting them over the head was to wrestle them into a headlock and make them say 'uncle.'

It didn't go the way Paine hoped and it really didn't go the way Seymour hoped.

Seymour shut his eyes and roared. Some other part of him took over. It was the same part that lashed out at his father.

It was some primordial force underneath the mass of desires and fears and thoughts and questions, lying in a black oozing puddle at the bottom of his mind. It had crawled along the evolution of the mind and seemed to occupy the tiny part of the mind nothing else wanted to get close to. Maybe it was want of food, maybe it was over territory, maybe it was just the first asshole in the evolution of life. Whatever it was, it had grabbed on to the other sludge and held it down until it either died or was about to squidge away in fear and never come back, and it had left that mark on Seymour's brain.

Seymour's knee connected with Paine's stomach and even though he'd closed his eyes, he managed a direct hit with his metal fist as it connected with Paine's head.

Then he made the mistake of opening his eyes.

Paine was on the floor, rubbing her head.

"I will make you if I need to," he said.

Then he just realized he'd put his hand on the 'Do Not Push' button.

There was only one way things could possibly—

The Door burst open and Yuna was there. "I heard screaming."

--Think of the devil.

'Okay, dumbass, get yourself out of this one.'

"What happened?" Yuna asked.

Good question. What explanation would get him into deeper shit than he was already in by looking absolutely clueless?

"I did something stupid," Paine said, already standing up.

Seymour jumped to the side in surprise.

It was bad enough these people were playing with him, but why did it have to be Player versus Player? He didn't want to be a game. He didn't like the fact that one of them had chosen confusion as her weapon.

"Everything's fine, Yuna," Paine said. "I'm going to help him with his arm, I'll be up soon."

"…Okay…" Yuna answered, and left.

"Huh?" Seymour asked one the door closed.

"That prove this isn't prison?" Paine asked.

"No," he answered.

Paine sighed. "Just… What exactly is it you're trying to prove? What's with the poker face?"

"You can see through that, can you?"

"Halfway," she answered. "I don't know what it's about."

He blinked. He contemplated telling her. Give anyone information about you and they can use it to beat you over the head with. "What if I don't want to tell you?"

"Then don't. But I'm stil fixing your damn arm."

"Agreed," he said, giving her a hint of a smile. He could confuse people too. That'll show her.


	13. Chapter 13

Seymour awoke blearily to someone shaking him.

"Hwh?" he asked. Then he realized he had to detach his face from his drool-soaked pillow.

He stared in the darkness at Rikku. Now they were playing games with three people. And waking him up to do it.

He covered his mouth as he yawned. "Yes?"

"Paine said to wake you up to make sure you weren't in a comma."

"I think that was 'coma,'" Seymour corrected her, and then realized it was useless with this one. She was already in her own run-on sentence.

"You're not mad, are you?" she asked.

"No." He yawned again. "What time is it?"

"Two," she answered, then realized they were in darkness. "PM." Where she was and what was going on had little to do with what came out of Rikku's mouth, just what other people said.

Seymour stood up. "Bad storm in the Thunderplains."

"Actually, we're not over the Thunderplains anymore," Rikku said. "We're over the Calm Lands. There were a bunch of fiends we had to kill over there and we needed to get away from Guadosalam."

"Ah." That was it from him. Unless you asked him a question or asked him to move, he was just furniture.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"That would make three you asked already," he said.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes, it's a yes."

"Did you say 'Mommy' back there?"

Seymour turned to look at her. He didn't like lying. The thing about lying was you had to remember it in case it came up again, and it could come up years from now. It was better just to twist language like a wet towel and let it snap. Besides, someone usually hit you if they found out.

He didn't like giving information away to an enemy and this girl was in league with Yuna. But then, looking at her and talking to her, she'd need things explained to her three times to figure out to use it against him, and by that time she'd be bored forgotten it all.

"I might have. I can't remember."

"Can't remember what?"

"I don't really know; that's the strange thing about not being able to remember."

"Where'd you get those?"

"Pants?" Seymour asked. It would take some getting used to the fact that Rikku's train of thought wasn't just all-terrain, it flew.

"Those tattoos."

"I'm not sure."

"Why not? They're huge!" she said. "You just woke up with them one day?"

"I mean…" Al Behd had tattoos. They scavenged for anything that they could fix or use or sell or just kick if they felt like it. Judging by her, it seemed they had a general problem with the concept of pants and weren't keen on shoes. They were just sailors with metal flying boxes. "I was drunk at the time."

Rikku scratched her head.

He thought she'd have known what drunk was.

"Nuns get drunk?"

"I wasn't a nun. Those are women."

"They don't get drunk?"

"They can if they want to."

"What were you then?"

"Male."

Rikku scratched her head more.

Seymour felt he'd better speak up before she made a hole in it. More holes. "I was a monk. Then I was a priest. Then I was a Maester. Were any of those the word you were looking for."

"Maybe. What're those?"

"A…" It suddenly dawned on him what kind of person he was talking to: someone hit facts with logic like a hammer. "Do you care?"

"I dunno."

"Would you like to know the rest of the story?"

"What story?"

Seymour sighed.

"You must've been really drunk. Those tattoos are huge."

"That's what I meant."

"Oh. Okay."

"I used to fight fiends up in Macalania in order to clear the roads for pil—people. I'd come back to the temple with blood all over me, my shirt ripped, and I … looked too intimidating.

"A… friend of mine suggested them. After four bottles of wine I woke up with a hangover big enough to distract me from the fact that my chest hurt." And no clothes he remembered.

"So what are they?"

Seymour shrugged. "Blobs I guess."

Well, Seymour thought. That was the end of that.

And yet… he was talking to someone who might as well think the password to get by her is 'Hey, wake up!' She could figure things out, she just had to care first. And she didn't about a lot of things.

"What exactly is it you plan to do with me?"

"Yunie says the farplane's all messed up and we need to cheer you up to fix it and then she'll get Tidus back and thingies with stop eating buildings."

"Cheer me up?" he asked.

"Yup."

"Did I hear you right?" he asked. "Cheer me up?"

"Yup."

He blinked. "Cheer me up?"

"Yeah."

"You could've fooled me."

"So… um… did you want anything?"

"Cheer me up?"

"You sound like Yunie."

"I've been kidnapped, mutilated, interrogated, confused, assaulted, threatened, and starved."

"I think Barkeep understands now."

"Cheer me up?"

"You still sound like Yunie.

This time there was a pause first. "Cheer me up?"

Finally, Rikku got the clue that Seymours' mental record was skipping and would need help continuing to the next line.

"We just… suck."

Seymour said nothing.

"Badly," she said. "Is there anything you want?"

"A…" What was that thing called? Them had them in Bevelle temple and for machina they didn't explode much. Then they did explode, it was just a small pop. "A lightswitch would be nice."

Knickers? No, he didn't want to go there, not just with an enemy, but with girls.

"I could use something to read… not Al Behd. A real bed would be nice."

"Okay."

"What, right now?"

"Sure, why not?" Rikku asked. She started to shuffle her feet nervously.

"If you want to leave, I won't be offended."

"Okay," she said, and left. Apparently, for her, formalities were something that happened to other people.

"Cheer me up?"

………………..

Seymour stood looking out his tiny window. Not much had made sense in his life, and things were making less in his new one.

So far, 'cheer Seymour up' consisted of nothing happening for six hours. Which had been fine, since he slept through four and managed another shower. For prison, he was managing to stay very clean.

Well, it was a start.

The door opened, only as loud as a lock of hair hitting the floor.

Seymour didn't even blink. Maybe if he ignored them, they'd go away.

"Hey," Paine said.

Seymour took a while wondering if he should reply at all. After he made his decision, he took a while wondering what to say. Finally, he asked "Where are we?" to the window. He let Paine eavesdrop on it.

"Over the Youth League Headquarters."

"Early retirement plan?"

"It's… something new. Operation Mi'ihen happened over here."

"Ah—what're you--?"

"I just wanted…" Paine said.

Their eyes met and their sentences dissolved away in the confused tension between them.

Paine's hand hovered unthreateningly next to Seymour's face, just as a guide and to prove she wouldn't hurt him. Seymour's own flesh hand jerkingly made its way close to her face. He kept puling away, still not sure of what being so close to her would portend.

His fingertip brushed her bangs and then shot away to his side.

"I just—" Paine got out.

"You have an eyelash on… on your cheek."

"—your concussion… y'know… you…"

"My head still hurts. I—um…" Suddenly, as if upstairs wasn't having enough trouble trying to work things out, downstairs woke up. The problem was, it was impossible for the two to communicate, despite the fact that they occupied the same duplex. It went beyond a lack of communication. When one wanted to sleep, the other went jogging. When one wanted to escape on the pretense that they'd left the cat in the oven, the other threw a party. When one wanted to sit down and suss things out for a few hours, the other was on fire. "I don't quite feel comfortable," he mumbled and politely shoved her away.

Damnit. Why did she have to be dressed in tight leather? And why did he have to be… not someone else?

"I…" Paine started. "I told the other's I'd take a gusey at that arm of yours…without cutting anything off."

"I cleaned it up this morning," he said hurriedly. "And changed the bandages."

"You…You have anything to eat yet?" she asked. She wasn't used to saying anything that didn't qualify as 'Let's get spheres,' 'Those people suck,' 'Let's beat them up,' or anything similar.

"Is this an invitation or a subtle threat?" he asked.

"Well, it's not a date," Paine said, and went to the door. She turned to make sure he was following her.

He was, but gave no indication as to what he thought of it.

Paine sighed. She felt she'd never figure out how to deal with someone who had their head screwed on right, just against the thread. "You really don't talk much, do you?" she asked as she led the way up the stairs.

"No, miss."

"I have a name."

"So do I."

"Right… Seymour?"

"Miss?

"Paine."

"Miss Paine."

"Close enough," she said. Great. They were on the elevator already. "Why are you looking at me funny?"

"The usual funny or a different one?"

Yevon, he was annoying. "Differently."

"This is… rather awkward."

"The elevator?" she said, stepping off.

"Er, no. Not that."

Paine sat down at the bar and Seymour quietly followed suit. Paine looked around for what he was trying to hint at, then it hit her, along with her own hand. "This isn't a date."

"I know. It's… not quite that."

………….

In some religions, clergy and anyone else who came within fifty feet of the sacred buildings or ceremonies weren't even allowed to look at someone too friendly.

In Spira, the church knew that men with too much testosterone and women who can who eventually realize that a large blunt object or a well-tuned fist can make someone prone with one or two hits is a dangerous and distracting thing.

It was also obvious that men and women speak completely different languages; they just use the same words.

Because women could use twenty different subsets of their language while using only three words, tradition was that women asked the men out. Because none of them were gay, had any clue about it, and were too chicken to ask, they gave up and let anyone ask anyone out when it came to same gender interests.

This certainly simplified things with the way things worked out. One would either ask another out or build up so many hormones that they'd quit the church and make a new living at a dimly-lit bar owned by a one-eyed man that swirled spit around in dirty mugs. If the two people could stand each other for more than five minutes, the first would ask if the other wanted to go to a room, and then the innuendo was over.

Sex was no longer a distraction.

Love was.


	14. Chapter 14

Guado weren't traditionally monks. They had their own holy grounds to watch over.

Still, Seymour found he wasn't the only one from Guadosalam that stayed in the Macalania temple.

Whereas Seymour had inherited the density that comes from humans and looked as if he intimidated narrow doorways, this man looked as if he could fit between pages of a book. His dark green hair always caught the dull light in the temple and turned it into a beautiful chiaroscuro effect or became a set of thin forest of green mirrors when the strands caught the light reflected by the thick snow.

The green falling down his forehead and past his dark blue eyes over his pale skin resembled the magical and haunting forest of Macalania below the snowline in the moonlight…as if home had become more beautiful and sought him out.

"Hey…" the stranger said, leaning against the wall as if he owned it and would smack it if it talked back. He'd been doing this for days with different walls. What exactly did he think he was doing with the temple?

Seymour stopped sweeping. The man obviously wanted something, but Seymour had no idea how to reply.

Why did everyone stop to stare at the boy who treated sweeping snow and killing vicious yetis in the manner?

"You're cute," the man said.

Now Seymour had even less of a clue. None of the men knew why he was confused when they hit on him, but most thought it was cute. Then again… no one ever asked.

They asked other questions.

……………..

"Whatever ideas you're getting about—" Paine said.

"It's not what you think," Seymour said, and hoped to leave it at that.

"Then what is it?"

For a moment, Seymour contemplated not telling her. He was like that. Usually, if people asked, he'd tell them stuff they didn't even know they didn't want to hear, but he always had the choice of not going where he didn't want to go. He had precision steering in conversations.

However… Paine had a large sword, was Yuna's right hand… person, and a nasty attitude. Saying you didn't want to tell her was like insulting a Ronso's mom.

"You remind me of someone who invited me to restaurants frequently," Seymour said. "That's all."

They were sitting down now. He didn't know how that had happened. She'd been steering their movements and he'd been trying to steer the conversation. Neither had been looking where the other had been going.

Paine was sitting next to him. He didn't like that. It was bad enough when she was just the prison warden complaining that she really wasn't. Now… Now what?

It was a trick. It had to be. There was no other possible explanation. Yuna was cooking something. Either that or she would be once she found out and Paine would be smiling the whole way through.

"Well, if whoever she is, is still around and sing—" Paine started. Great. A plan. They'd get it on, he'd cheer up, nothing would eat people or landscape anymore, and most importantly, she could forget about him.

"His name was Tiranel," Seymour said, putting no emphasis on any of the words and stopping Paine's suggestion skidding in its tracks. "He developed a rather nasty attitude like yours and left me."

Paine was already working overtime trying to crawl out of the pit she'd driven into. Something kicked the back of her brain fiercely, but she kicked it in the nadgers before it decided to kick her mouth and get out. There were some things he didn't need to know. Just because fate threw you a coincidence didn't mean it mattered. It wasn't like she was his sister.

"He said what we'd done was wrong and blamed me. Considering the last time I saw him, he threw a clock at me, I'd say he'd either dead or unhappily married," Seymour commented. "Either way, I doubt he'd be interested."

'He must've been trying really hard at that marriage for being unhappy about it,' Paine thought. 'Damn, just damn.'

Grabbing the wheel of the conversation deftly, Seymour refused to be outdone at articulation topic management.

"Why am I always… dealt with by you?"

"What's wrong with me?"

Seymour stopped himself before he muttered 'Would you like a list?' "Why not Yuna or Rikku?"

"Rikku's… Rikku," Paine said. Explaining things to Rikku was difficult. Explaining Rikku to others was practically impossible. "I'm not sure she knows what's going on."

"Well, then, that would put us on equal footing."

"You don't know anything about Al Behd or machina."

"She doesn't know anything about Guado or temples."

"She… she's not much of a conversationalist."

"Good. I don't like talking all that much."

"How long have you known her?"

"Half as long as I've known you, which has only been a few days."

"Let's just say she thinks you're still picking flowers and leave it at that."

"If you say so," Seymour said.

Paine sighed. What just happened? It felt as he'd won something and she'd lost.

Seymour didn't care. It shut Paine up so maybe he could be in the same room as her and spend some energy sorting out his thoughts instead of tangling them up with dialog. The brain and mouth were never speaking the same language and were only barely connected to each other.

"Yuna found a group of Guado," Paine said. She'd show him…right? "They were scattered when Guadosalam exploded. There was this group and it turned out there were a dozen of them and only one guy was defending them from some jerks. Turned out the group was nothing but one giant family."

"And?"

"And the guy defending them knew some stuff about you she didn't." And Yuna'd killed his brother, who had tried to defend you. And Tida was the guard's sister. And the kid was hers… by Tiranel. Who was missing. "And that they are a family and how crappy yours turned out and all that."

Food was set in front of Seymour. He wasn't really interested with so much on his mind, but he started nibbling on it in order to put everything in his mind aside.

However, fate never seemed to let that happen.

Seymour was not someone to trust guilt with. He'd find someway of accidentally turning it into a disaster and then feel worse.

"I was thinking…" Seymour started.

"Never a good thing with you, but go on," Paine said, then slapped her forehead. Damnit, she thought to herself, think first, then talk.

"When I said you wouldn't understand last night… I had no right to say that. I know nothing about you." It seemed an innocent enough way to see if she was a serial murderer or the type to turn her back on stupidity.

"…Like?"

"When I was a child I was kept from interacting with anyone but my parents. Even the palace staff would have nothing to do with me but keep me from someone else. When I was eight my mother and I were sent to Baaj Island to protect us from a civil uprising, which was over me. Before I returned to Guadosalam, my mother took me to Zanarkand and took her own life. My father found me wandering around alone and accused me of murdering her. I was nine or so at the time. After that, my father shut me in my room, now and then threatening to kill me. Only a few years after that, Donna told me to run away. Some monk at the Macalania temple was wandering around and found me. I learned something there, and I've carried it with me ever since I murdered my father." Throughout the entire speech Seymour was calm. He was completely unreadable. Whatever had happened had affected him deeply that it could almost always be read in his eyes, but he spoke as if reading from a book on taxes.

Seymour blinked. Paine swallowed.

"I have a right to live." Seymour turned away and stared at the plate.

"…That's it?" Paine asked.

"I have the same right as everyone else. No matter how much they deny it, it's my choice, not theirs."

Then Paine realized what he meant. People had denied it. Profusely sometimes.

The fact that you were just like anyone else wasn't something you carried around with you twenty-four hours a day. It was something you kept on a shelf and took down and held for a while after a bad day.

"You have the same look in your eyes."

"It's not as impressive as you'd think."

"But it's there."

"Look, I just don't wanna be treated like a girl, okay? I had eleven brothers and my dad when I was a kid and everyone thought I'd ruined their lives by just being there. Everyone thought they needed to stop what they were doing because I was female."

"Perfectly understandable."

"But I don't want to be treated like a dyke, either."

"You mean, you don't want to be treated like a LITTLE girl, is that it?"

"…Yeah," Paine said, somewhat embarrassed that he'd been correct. "Look, I… I'm gonna go, and… I think I can…I'm gonna go."

Seymour shrugged. He didn't seem bothered by it.

In fact, he was bothered by the fact that there was a thought floating around in his head that he should be, and he didn't like unsolicited thoughts soliciting him. Part of his brains said he should put more effort into finding somewhere to run to. Another part answered 'Where, the moon?' A third part ignored them and said there's an attractive woman over there in tight leather and she not only seems to constantly want to talk with you, but to make you happy.

At that moment different parts of his brain started to argue about how to put two and two together and none of them came up with four. This made it harder to talk than a second ago.

"Miss?" Seymour asked, standing up.

"Paine," Paine corrected.

"…Is there anywhere to do laundry?"

…………………

Rikku was reliable at two things: machina, and chores. Chores were just instructions for machina to her anyway. She could outchore anyone on the airship. She chore knew what to do.

This wasn't that surprising. Even buddy knew how to wash his socks. He just didn't.

What was surprising was that Seymour knew how to do everything the unautomated way.

The first thing you learn about religion is that the temple doesn't clean itself.

Seymour loved chores. He got out into the world, even if it was picking up the trash other people left there. He got exercise and light and made himself useful enough that no one wanted him to leave.

This wasn't the first time anyone was surprised by it when they considered his birthright. The servants became annoyed when he made his own bed and put his own clothes away. Eventually they had to hide the brooms in order to make him stop. He still managed every now and then to do some manual labor. It confused his enemies and kept them from talking to him.

The only surprise for him was that the machina didn't explode.

……………………..

"Yuna—"

"It's not fair!" Yuna screamed.

"Yuna, I—"

"Where is he?" Yuna asked, but that was only because she put a question mark in it. She tried to storm past Paine, who stopped her by grabbing her, but Yuna was putting up an especially good fight. Never underestimate wiggling.

"Whoa! What'd he do?"

"Who cares?" Yuna yelled. "I'm tired of being in the shadows! I'm tired of standing here! I'm gonna go find him and tell him to cheer up whether he likes it or not or else!"

"Yuna, listen to yourself."

"I am and I don't care. I'm not gonna do just nothing."

"Exactly, now you're gonna give him a heart attack."

"He'll get over it!"

"Yuna!"

"Let go!"

"Yuna, those things are from his damn head! THEY don't want to get close to you. Get it?"

"No." Yuna wasn't screaming, but she was still loud.

"Yuna, he is very scared of you. You chase away all other weird shit in his mind. You made his own trauma almost wet it's pants. If you go near him, he's gonna jump trying to get away."

"We'll catch him again."

"He's gonna jump ship while still in the air."

"I'm tired of—"

"I heard you. That's what I want to talk to you about. Do you like interior decorating?" Paine asked, pronouncing the last two words as if they were very foreign and contained many symbols she didn't know how to pronounce.

Yuna nodded.

"Look, I have an idea, but first I want you to know it's not a date."

"With me?"

"Definitely not with you."


	15. Chapter 15

Seymour found himself still in the laundry room, watching Rikku rock back and forth rapidly as she sat on it.

He hadn't planned on what he was going to do after he did laundry.

"Yunie's been upset 'cause she can't help." Rikku said, after a pause she thought was too long. She'd point out any fact she wasn't explicitly told was a secret. It was pure random chance he didn't get 'The sky is blue.' The fact that it was dark grey was indeed a factor, but the principle is the same.

"Help how?"

"Um… at all?" Rikku wasn't one for word problems, and lately all conversations had become them.

"Ah."

"Paine said you didn't like her." If there was a folder marked 'Top Secret' she'd tell anyone interested exactly where it was because only the contents were secret. Everything else was fair game.

Now it was a puzzle for Seymour. What answer to that wouldn't get him hurt? "It's not that."

"Really?"

"I don't trust Yuna."

"Yunie didn't lie to you."

"I meant I don't trust Yuna not to…" Damn, he'd waded in too deep Stupid mouth.

"Not to what?"

Damn attention span. It's not as short as it looks.

"Do you trust Yuna?"

"Yeah."

"Always?"

"Always."

"What about what she does?"

"You mean she lies by doing things?"

"I mean do you think everything she does is right?"

"Well… she isn't always perfect at shooting—"

"I meant do you think everything she does should be done exactly the way Yuna does it?"

Rikku stared at her nose and made an expression as if she were tasting something for the first time.

This went on for ten minutes and Seymour decided to at least relish the quiet.

"Why not?" Just like the machina she liked, all that whirring and banging and time resulted in one single short-lived answer to all your patience and effort to get it to work.

"She killed me before," Seymour said. "Several times."

"But you're here now."

"Let me try this again."

"Okay."

"If Yuna did something you thought was bad, would you stop her?"

"Yes," Rikku answered automatically.

"Truly?"

"Really bad, yes."

"Even if she got mad."

"Well… yeah.'

"Very mad?"

"Um… yeah."

"What would you do if you thought Yuna was going to do something very bad and you couldn't just talk to her to make her stop?"

"I dunno."

"Would you still try to stop her?"

"… Yeah."

"Even if she thinks it is what should be done?"

"But why would--?"

"Would you?"

"… Yeah."

"Thank you, then."

"But… what about Yunie?"

"I do not want to be murdered again. That is all."

And suddenly there was silence save for the machine that miraculously—in Seymour's opinion—cleaned clothes. Rikku seemed to be drawing the room into herself while mentally putting distance between herself and him. Seymour stared at the wall, having grown bored with floors and his own shoes.

It was several minutes before something broke the silence like a baseball bat hitting a priceless vase.

The door opened, Rikku let out a loud and piercing squeak and somewhere glass broke. Seymour just turned around. After the initial noises were over, he figured nothing was going to kill him.

"Would you relax?" Paine asked. "Jeez, it's not like I'm going to kill you."

Rikku screamed again, this time shorter.

"What's going on?" Paine asked.

"Nothing!" Rikku chirped, her nails almost digging into the metal of the machina she was sitting on.

"Well, I'm taking him somewhere—"

"Bring him back!" Rikku chirped.

"Do you people ever make sense?" Seymour asked.

"Well, I try," Paine answered, grabbing his hand and yanking him out the door before Rikku screamed again.

"Where are we going?" Seymour asked.

"Out."

"Out?"

"Well, you hate being stuck here, so I think I found something that might work out."

"I'm not sure—"

"Shut up and do it," Paine said, which was much more comforting than 'You'll like it, I promise."

……………

The moonflow was relatively unchanged. It had turned a stark blank and white, with an iridescent fog of pyreflies.

The sky over head had turned some ugly perversion of black. It was the same color as blood that was vomited up during internal bleeding. It wasn't a serene black that embraced you in it's darkness in which all things were comfortingly hidden. It wasn't he black that hid you from the searing, scarring light, where you can see everything in it's burning lies. It wasn't the darkness of warmth and heartbeats and safety.

It was actually a nice stroll as Seymour and Paine walked along the bank. No people were about now, so it was perfectly safe.

Paine had to go and ruin the feeling of relative safety and tranquility by talking. "Was there anyone you had a nice relationship with? Maybe a little black book?"

"There were several," he answered, looking around. He swore there was someone there. It was hard to see ahead in the soupy darkness. "I don't remember their names and the only reason they remember was because they slept with the only known half-Guado and he ended up causing quite a bit of commotion."

"Well, maybe—"

"I don't think I'm ready to start a relationship with someone who will probably end up killing me." There. He said it. It was true. Now why was he getting more and more confused?

The sky flashed stark white, taking the entire landscape away as it did.

Seymour jumped back as the afterimage faded and the sky growled hungrily.

"You're afraid of lightning?" Paine asked.

It a fit of snark and irony, the sky flash and growled again, leaving Seymour at the mercy of his adrenaline.

"Among other things…" Seymour said, and then realized that not only was he clinging to dear life to something, but if was clinging back. It was also soft and warm and curvy in all the right places—and in the wrong situation.

"Um…" Words vanished from his head entirely. He opened his eyes.

His hands had moved on their own accord to her cheeks… her warm cheeks… her warm, welcoming… those eyes, bright in actici—

--suddenly in front of his eyes was the face of Yuna, dressed in white silks and feathers, chiseled in still perfection in time and memory, every detail meticulously carved over his vision—

pation…

Seymour shot backward and grabbed his head as he sank to his knees.

Overhead, the wind was picking up and shuffling the leaves of the trees.

Somewhere, someone was watching.

…………………….

Everyone knows that when one sense goes, the others grow stronger. The mind tends to go beyond that. Anyone moronic enough to put a fork in the toaster has the potential for great sonnets or masterpieces on the piano. Most end up fried before that, though, and it's actually an improvement to the gene pool.

There are many senses that people have beyond knowing you smashed your tow or ate something wrong. Some people can feel other's minds. Some know the weather. Some can tell where someone is without being able to sense them in the five blander senses.

Of course, to do such things, you'd have to be a complete twit. Or, in Isaruu's case, a complete twat, which is close enough.

There were two people ahead and he had met both of them. As is true to his nature, he didn't argue with his instructions, which was to see what was left of the Youth League camp and deliver a message if anything or one was still there.

As usual, this resulted in a worldwide ripple caused by singular stupidity.

……………………….

Wind whipped through everything in it's way, which was mostly everything. It would have blown away the demons, were they still tangible.

Boards of the dock flew away helplessly, boats gave no fight against the whirl, water rose and became the thickest, fastest fog ever.

A spiraling tidal wave was starting.

The roof of Donna's house flew away and disappeared into windy history. The rest of the house soon followed, but neither stayed intact, nor fell on anyone, wicked or not.

Donna wasn't there. Bartello wasn't there either. Neither was huddled with the others in the temple, where all prejudice was put aside in favor of survival.

They had known a storm was coming. They knew it would hit harder somewhere else.

………………….

"Seymour? Seymour!" Paine said, shaking him. He still held his head and he kept his eyes closed. He'd been like that as she had half-dragged him back to the ship.

"What's wrong?" Yuna asked, arriving innocently in the hallway.

"Aah!" Seymour yelped, snapping out of his self-induced catatonia.

"What? I didn't do anything!" Yuna complained.

Seymour dashed away and left in the elevator.

"Paine!" Yuna screamed.

"What?" Paine asked, heading onto the bridge. "How should I know what got into him?"

"Where's Seymour?" Rikku asked, from the floor of the bridge.

"He got scared of Yuna and ran off," Paine said.

Rikku yelped in fear.

"You wanna deal with him, then fine, I'm not stopping you," Paine said.

"I think I will!" Yuna yelled.

"You can't!" Rikku yelled.

"You can't stop me!"

"Hey, guys?" Buddy asked.

"Yeah, I can! I think!" Rikku yelled.

"Stop her from what?" Paine asked.

"Nothing!" Rikku squeaked, then ran off.

"What was that about?" Paine asked.

"Guys?" Buddy asked.

"Who put you in charge?" Yuna demanded.

"Huh?"

"Guys, there's a message for you."

"I'm answering it!" Yuna said, poking at Paine.

"Fine. Do that!"

"Hello?" Buddy asked.

"I will!"

"Baralai says he wants to meet up with you at the temple in Bevelle. He wants to discuss how to solve this problem."

"Then, let's go!" Yuna said. "And you'd better not tell me to stay out of it, Paine!"

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."


	16. Chapter 16

This was more like it. Actually moving the airship. Storming up to people whether or not you'd been invited anyway. Taking charge, now that's what it was all about! Of course, Yuna would swear it was all for overall good and not for herself.

Yuna quite proudly strode through the flooded, dark, and somewhat broken street, between the buildings of the exact same description.

Yuna tried to reassure Paine that everything would go smoothly with her in charge. Paine didn't argue. She didn't want to admit Yuna had nothing to do with why she was worrying, let alone what the real reason was.

Rikku was perky, bouncy, and hyper still, but she kept looking over her shoulder and acted paranoid when she looked straight ahead.

Both of the other girls decided to leave her alone and let her sort things out. She probably thought the sky was falling.

Baralai seemed rather calm and collected for the state of things. He nodded in greeting and led them inside…

…and that was where negotiations went sour.

Before the doors closed, everyone in a ring of soldiers had their guns or flamethrowers aimed at the girls. The Gullwings were outnumbered and outgunned, but not outpowered. The problem was, Baralai knew this before the beginning.

"If it is any difference to you, we don't want to have to shoot you," Baralai said, still standing calm and composed, hands behind his back.

"That's comforting," Paine said sarcastically.

"What do you want?" Yuna asked.

"It seems we are both learning from my predecessor," Baralai said. "I want you to call your airship, have it land, and tell everyone on board to do as my guards say."

"Why?"

"Because if you don't, I'll have my guards cover my escape before they leave as well, and I'll call you all enemies of the church and leave you and the rest of the world to your own devices. Oh, and they already made up about twenty different versions of the details, but I assure you: everyone knows you've got Seymour."

"What happens if we do what you ask?" Yuna asked.

"You, your friends, and your crew will be happily held in a few rooms close at hand. So long as you don't try to leave, we won't have to throw you in jail and cancel your room service."

"What about Seymour?" Yuna asked.

"What about him?"

"He's hiding something," Paine said.

"Dur."

"Just making sure we're on the same page. We had trouble staying on the same book a while ago."

"He's hiding a library?" Rikku asked.

"Are you done?" Baralai asked.

"You can never tell," Paine said.

"What's going to happen to Seymour?" Yuna asked.

"Ever since someone supposedly shot and killed him and he came back again—"

"It was a rock!" Yuna interrupted. "It was a rock. Some idiot hit him with a rock!"

"Anyway, ever since whatever really happened, people have been going into riots about it. It is up to me to placate them."

"And letting them lynch Seymour will make them feel better about themselves?" Yuna asked.

"Would I be that barbaric?"

"Yes," Paine said automatically.

"I want to give the world what it should have had a long time ago,"

"A party?" Rikku asked.

"A kick in the ass?" Paine asked.

"You're not killing Seymour," Yuna said.

"No, I'm not. I want to put him on trial."

"What jury--?" Paine started.

"Oh, I found one. I found someone who wasn't there at all when it all happened, is as unbiased as I can find, and likes to get to the bottom of things. Now, you can either resist and face an angry mob, or you can go along with this and I'll say everything that's happened has been dealt with and anyone going after him after the trial gets punished unless Seymour causes another disaster entirely."

'Or I could tell them to fire at the temple and kill everyone inside,' Yuna thought. 'It'd martyr me, but Seymour would be safe… wouldn't he?'

Yuna sighed. No, life was never that easy. She'd broken into a new reality and it hurt. "Guys, bring the airship down and land… and do what you're told."

Yuna winced. She'd never, ever, been so trapped in her life. Not even by Seymour.

Paine put her hand on Yuna's shoulder as Yuna began to cry. "Can we speak to whoever's going to do this?"

"No, that would be interfering with a trial," Baralai said.

"Can we talk to you before the trial?" Paine asked.

"No, that would be interfering with the trial, and possibly bribing or threatening a court official."

"You suck," Paine said.

"It's not fair," Rikku said, starting to cry herself. "I promised!"

………………..

"Hey! Quit shoving!" Brother complained. The guard didn't seem to care and Brother was annoying his friends more than his enemies.

"At least tell us what's going on," Buddy said.

"What'd I do?" Shinra complained.

"You are being detained," one of the guard said, not watching them. If they wanted to, they could run away, but like idiots, they stayed. That would be because they were, in fact, idiots.

"Detention?" Brother asked. "But I'm not in school."

"Look, shut up before—hey!" Buddy yelled, seeing three guards around Seymour as he politely and slowly let himself be escorted out.

"I'm just waiting to be assured that Yuna had no part in this," Seymour said. One of the guards waved his gun threateningly at him. "I just want to scratch my nose, I'll put my hand up in a min—fine. There, my hands are up, what now?"

"Now you'll be escorted to your cell, and later you'll talk to someone. Tomorrow, you're going on trial."

"If this is a parking ticket, I assure you those three were driving," Seymour said.

"Glib as always," Baralai said smugly, approaching Seymour and ignoring the others. "No, this is your trial, for whatever exactly you did. Too many rumors about now, and too many about then."

"And the point of all this would be pure aggravation on all of our parts and sheer smug cruelty on yours, I take it."

"No, not really," Baralai said. "The people are angry. If I do this, I can pardon you of whatever you've done, say it's all over, and then have the authority and moral ground to tell everyone to get on with their lives."

"Ah, yes," Seymour said. "Spira looks to the church and its people for hope and salvation, and they must always remember that and let nothing else keep them from it. Now, the sooner I'm in wherever you want me to be, the sooner I can put my arms down. Lead on."

But Baralai had frozen two minutes ago.

"Is there something wrong?" Seymour asked.

Baralai slowly faded back into reality. It wasn't the way he'd left it. Everyone assumes things are fair and fine, just like leaving your keys somewhere and they'll stay there. The universe doesn't work that way and your keys will go missing anyway. "… I think I left something on." He walked away as he motioned for the guards to escort their respective captives away.

………….

The universe has rules. These rules cannot be broken. These rules cannot be bent.

Or, more precisely, should not.

The universe is not a pet. It cannot be trained. It cannot be tricked. It cannot be coaxed. The universe does not care for cookies.

In short, if the universe had decided to be fair, it would be. Since it has decided on the opposite, it won't be.

Ever. At all. No matter what.

Trying to make the universe fair makes it angry.

Never, ever make the universe angry.

…………………

Seymour wasn't stupid. He was gifted at annoyance, true, but he wasn't stupid. At least, when he was alive.

He'd figured out most of what was going on and why no one had told him. Somehow the Farplane emulated the internal landscape of the mind of the Guado kings after it was far too late to call in a therapist.

Somehow the farplane had quite literally been ripped a new one and the rest of the world was either still following him or slowly turning into his father's mental backyard atrocity.

So the whole world would either collapse under his own instability or be subsumed into his father's hatred and hypocrisy. And Seymour thought his own fate was depressing.

………………….

Rule one: The universe is unfair.

Rule two: Always

Rule three: You can't change the rules

Rule four: Remember rule number one

Rule five: Never, EVER, complain about the rules.

…Most people don't even know rule one.

………………..

People are the most dangerous creatures on earth. Some worlds are lucky enough to have just one kind of people. Others are even luckier to have none at all.

People give themselves way too much credit. It's not learning or tools or language that makes them so capable as well as so likely to put push the big red button with instructions starting with 'Do not' and then look around for sympathy from a big black empty sky because it had pretty lights in it.

People are people because people made up the term 'people.' And that's where it all started.

People became people not when they banged two rocks together, but when one creature banged one rock on the head of someone else. With that rock came magical concepts that didn't need words to be dangerous. They existed at the dawn of people and far before words.

A rabbit knows that DNA makes you a rabbit. A rabbit knows that being a rabbit equals being a rabbit, no more, no less. Rabbits don't make up concepts that what you do determines what you are and overrides DNA, which was around long before concepts.

The more people put into a concept, the more dangerous it is. Every concept is more detrimental than beneficial. They are so dangerous that to disbelieve them reduces you merely to your DNA, and you're no longer people.

And people need to be people. Always.

When the concepts are brought to the fore, they are only the water sliding back along the pebbles before the wave carves a new part of the coastline. These concepts have become words… Words like 'right,' 'wrong,' 'humanity,' and 'justice,' are just a few, and they can change everything people touch.

……………………………

Nooj approached the cell. There was no point in making a cell that wasn't underwater, over an active volcano, high in the air, or made with walls fifteen feet thick and without a door to keep Seymour in. This cell wade made to keep other people out, which was why it was a quaint little jail cell the church had used in the days when it conducted inquisitions that it no longer admitted it had ever done. The cell was for those who confessed or were rich enough to buy someone else to be tortured.

There were many cells in a row on either side of the hallway, and only one was occupied, one randomly in the middle.

The occupant looked up at him from sitting one the bed, noticing him immediately. He stared deeply and silently. He kept on staring; he stared as if he'd stared at the world through bars all his life.

"My name is Nooj," Nooj greeted.

"Am I supposed to know you?" Seymour asked.

"No, not at all," Nooj said with a certain tone to it.

Seymour understood and blinked back.

"I just wanted to see… without the pressure of a trial, or anything else."

Seymour understood that even without the bars, he'd stare back at the man the same way. A lot was being said without being said.

They stared at each other for a few more minutes, this time communicating nothing silently.

"I must be going," Nooj said. "Curiosity killed the cat."

"Only because it heard that and went looking for the first one," Seymour said.

Nooj wandered off, not another word said. But this time, Seymour had told the untold. The words put together made a paradox, an enigma that ate at the brain. And without even knowing it, Seymour had said that was exactly what he was.


	17. Chapter 17

The boys were sitting around their respective room, doing the only thin they could: wait.

By this time all three of them had counted all the tiles and cracks in every surface they could find.

"They're gonna figure something out, right?" Brother asked.

"Yeah…don't worry…" Brother said.

Brother had asked three other times before. Each time, everyone doubted Buddy's answer more and more.

……………………

To say that things went down hill from there would be a lie. 'Downhill' denotes a gradual down ward process with movement of going a head while doing so. Also, 'downhill' denotes a two dimensional point-A-to-point-B process.

To make things clear, just assume a diagram that states that A, B, C, and E will come together and cause the fate and destiny equivalent of something mildly atomic, while D had already been eaten by something with large teeth.

A would be the fact that Seymour seemed to have given up on caring about the outcome of anything anymore. This lead to B, the trial, which lead to C, the riots. D would be the Gullwings now arguing and E would be Baralai's struggle to keep reality from changing shape and nature on him.

To elaborate:

A: Seymour saw no point in making friends, and no point in making enemies. Plus, he deduced, an attempt at either could backfire and he'd been burnt enough. Besides, he wasn't in the big metal flying box and that was a bright side to look on. Best not to jinx it.

B: The trial was carried out in the fashion that trials were meant to be. All sides of the argument were covered, without twisting fats or words around like wet towels and snapping them at people. Lawyers weren't paid on commission, and everyone just wanted to go home, but also had to do something competent. The whole point of what a trial is meant to do is to extract the truth through boredom. It's also meant to achieve the whole truth, which is almost always double-sided, hence why no one wants to handle it.

C: The riots were more finding someone blamable to blame while all hell broke loose. It's always easier to yell at someone else than to actually deal with a problem. Short term, that is. Seemingly long term, you hope to have died in the short term so it's not your problem any more.

A hurricane was picking up and the mainland was feeling the effects. Winds were picking up, and they were picking other things up as they did. The wind was full of stray people and chocobos stupid and unfortunate enough to get too close, as well as everything not nailed down and most things that had been nailed down.

The sky was the color you see when punched in the face. Just looking at the sky made people wonder if they're nose was broken. Lightning had thankfully begun to be rare, and for half-an hour people thought the winds were dying away slowly. This was unfortunate because someone was squashed by falling livestock as the wind could no longer support it.

Add to all that the monsters as well as all working spheres were broadcasting the trial, boring though it was. The world population had yet to grow up enough to deal with problems of their own on their own. Previously, when something went wrong, they turned out the church for answers and blamed sin. Now they turned to the Gullwings for answers, and blamed Seymour. Making sense out of a much needed enemy and forcing the population to become mature in desperate times was unthinkable. It was downright wrong.

People began doing what is time-tested to be the worst option available and obviously not the smart thing to do, or even the safest thing to do, but the most popular thing to do when everything is this bad: destroy stuff.

Looters looted and were looted while looting. Most people set what they got on fire if they kept it long enough. All windows were smashed, anything flammable was set on fire to light the way to more things to set on fire or break. The general direction of the destruction was aimed at Bevelle temple while the trial was going on.

D: Elaboration on an argument is usually superfluous, so all that shall be noted is that tension in the air was so thick one could float a toy boat on it and that all topics were argued about, including arguing about arguing.

E: Baralai was becoming very familiar with the phrase 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.' He wasn't doing more than moderating the trial and Seymour was in his annoying habit of being a gentleman. Still, he was noticing the connection to Seymour and outside. Ever since Seymour had arrived and left Yuna, the lightning had stopped. Dredging up issues during the trial had brought it back. It rained at one point and while discussing Seymour's marriage, one of the black monsters appeared on the very bridge, began eating the architecture, and then exploded. Seymour's own complexes and deep fears would be giving other people a dire need for therapy.

A, B, and D went into a heavy match of a full-contact sport of fate, while C tried to float on an idealized dream and drowned.

…………………..

All outside factors in fate excluded, It should be noted that Nooj was fervently against the death penalty. The problem with the death penalty is that no one gets the victim happily drugged first. This would eliminate a lot of complaining. But then, so would killing them very, very soon.

The problem with people who don't believe in the death penalty is that although they believe there are fates worse than death and fates better than death they tend not to be able to tell the difference.

………………………

If you take any number of people, especially friends, and give each of them a secret you didn't want anyone else knowing, and leave them locked in a room with each other, they will kill each other.

Before they kill each other, they will sit as far away as possible from each other and plot the demise of everyone else.

The Gullwings hadn't quite gotten to killing each other, but by now even Rikku had gotten several plausible ideas of how to kill Paine and Yuna.

In reality, this situation leads to at least one less person alive in the room. However, reality is constantly in flux and has many outliers, exceptions, and can easily be changed, altered, and veered off it's current course.

The sound of gunfire, as much as they wished to start it themselves, distracted everyone from their murderous intentions and they went to stop someone else's.

Just when they all got to the door, they heard the lock click open.

All boredom-induced-insanity gone, Yuna opened the door in curiosity and the others watched. As she did, a guard slumped into the room and promptly died, leaving no clues and certainly nothing to pilfer.

There was, however, a downed but alive guard a few feet away willing to give information in exchange for a potion.

Finding the poor sap had been the easy part. Getting the information was easy. Receiving it was hard to swallow. Getting to him was difficult.

A rock flew past, nearly taking off Yuna's nose as it flew past and then smashed a large chunk out of the wall.

The solider shielded his head with the only arm he could move.

Present company wasn't helping. Yuna backed into Rikku to dodge the rock. Rikku had been getting jumpier by the minute since they landed and had jumped an entire foot and was now clinging to Paine and twitching slightly, her gaze fixed on Yuna.

"What's going on—" Yuna yelled, only to be cut off by a large boom.

Yuna grabbed the soldier by the arm he was shielding himself with and dragged him as fast as she could back to the room as rock, sticks, bit of armor and even gunfire rattled over, past, next to, right next to, very close to, under, and at the three of them as they retreated.

Paine pried Rikku off and nursed a bump on her head she had received from flying bits of the building.

Rikku had someone's finger-guard in her hair and didn't notice. Everyone one else tried not to wonder where the finger went.

Yuna rubbed what felt like a pebble out of her eye.

"You testing weapons out there or what?" Paine asked.

"They're rioting!" the soldier said.

"Who's rioting?" Yuna asked.

"Everyone!" he answered.

"Over what?" Yuna asked. She'd clear this all up. Then she could get Seymour and then they'd have lunch. That was the way it was meant to be… right? For some reason she figured she'd be having a late dinner at best and might not be setting out the same number plates as she intended.

……………….

The universe has no rules about curiosity. Curiosity was not intended to be made.

Curiosity is essentially dangerous. Curiosity leads to questions, such as 'who am I?' 'Where am I?' and 'Is this good to eat?'

Overall philosophical animals tend to stand around and get eaten and miss mating season or give up on it entirely and very few things, given the wide variety of 'everything' are not good to eat.

Curiosity causes chaos, which the universe likes, so it puts up with it. In fact, it has been theorized that the universe may have been created by something, possibly entirely metaphorical, or at least metaphysical, wondering 'what happens if I do this?'

Chaos begets chaos, and so, hand-in hand with chaos, curiosity begets curiosity. Wondering what happens when you bang two rocks together can lead to wondering what the big glowing warm red thing is. Often times things ultimately lead to death, but there's usually a witness to keep the cycle going.

So chaos, in such a great form of randomness upon randomness in infinite layers created curiosity. Combine the two and watch them spiral onward and you pretty much understand everything in the universe from there on.

The universe has no rules for curiosity. But Curiosity has rules for itself. There is only one: Never ask the question unless you want the answer.

………………….

The soldier rubbed his head.

The three girls stood and stared at him. Rikku didn't exactly stand so much as shake like something explosive… which she may have been.

The soldier didn't like their expressions. It was as if the clown at their birthday party had killed their puppy.

"And there's counter-rioting," he said, trying to soften the tension which you couldn't cut with a knife, because if you tried, the blade would shatter.

In truth, the girls were not angry at all. The gears in all their heads had suddenly been forced to turn backwards and it had started machinery that was old and rusty and hadn't been used it a long time, if ever.

Rikku was used to having all her gears work independently and changing which one she thought with every few seconds. At the moment all gears were working together in perfect unison and she wasn't used to unity of her thoughts. She'd been mulling over the last sentence Seymour had said to her and she had been keeping a strict record of who was at fault for what. Due to all of this, Rikku's mind had gotten lost where it had never gone before: into morality. The only gray area Rikku had ever known was 'we shouldn't be here, but we're good people trying to do good things' or 'they started it' or even 'Two wrongs might make a right, but at least they don't leave much left.' Before, she had dipped her little toe into morality. Now she'd gone far beyond drowning and was so far deep she saw fish that were half teeth and glowed in the dark everywhere.

Paine wondered where Seymour was in general. She wondered where he was in conjunction to the rioters and how soon they'd get to him. She wondered what he'd do if they did ever get there. She wondered if that should be 'when,' the intelligence of a mob went down with each person added to it, but it got more destructive. She wondered if the world survived. She wondered if she should tell him how she felt. She wondered if she could tell him how she felt. She wondered if the world would survive until then. She wondered if either of them would survive until then. She wondered why she was feeling and thinking this way now. She wondered how they fit into the whole scheme of things. She wondered why she cared more that he survived for selfish reasons. She wondered if the others were beginning to suspect.

Yuna's brain was refusing to go the other direction and making a lot of friction to stop it. Everything was supposed to be fine after she dealt with things. She fixed things. That was what she did. Nothing was supposed to be impossible or complicated. Hard maybe, but straightforward and with no consequences. Especially no consequences. Little dark voices were talking, but she never heard them. Now she could hear them. She couldn't make them out, but she was suddenly aware that somewhere, something could have been her fault. She had to rescue Seymour right now. She'd stop the riots, she'd make it all better. Except… except Seymour didn't like her and the rioters did. Except if the two came into contact… Except she couldn't' think of what to do. All she could think of was that this was her fault.

She admitted it to herself. Something had been her fault. She had done something wrong, but she never wanted it to be this way. And she'd fix it. She'd fix it now. Because she fixed things. Even her own disasters. In fact, this was hardly that bad of a disaster and she'd make sure everything stayed this way… only better.

The people were rioting because they had heard Seymour was allowed to live.


	18. Chapter 18

There is something odd about hell and light. Give light even the tiniest chance to come in and it will fill the room. You can see a sliver from miles away if you give it a chance. It gets everywhere. The same is with hell. Let it in through a crack and you have flames at your feet no matter where you stand.

Light and hell are different though. You can see by light. You only think you can see by hell.

It was pitch dark down here. And the only occupant was locked in darkness: eternally ever comforting darkness… a darkness where dreams of comfort in the arms if someone justly indifferent but caring was born and nurtured.

Darkness was heaven. Darkness was where you could think all you wanted, and no one could take the images away or tell you they were wrong. No one could tell you _you_ were wrong in the darkness… the pitch darkness.

But here was hell. A long and bloody inquisition which made a great contribution to the study of how to keep people alive was performed down here. The church denied it all, but the hallways spoke the truth. Look harder and the truth would turn your stomach.

There was one mind down here. The dormant halls of hell were awakening with this one mind. They were waiting to be fed screams, to drink in the blood as bits were slowly ripped away in the name of Yevon. They begged for those pieces: tongues, muscles, fingers, bones, skin…eyes.

Seymour groaned and realized the door to hell had been slammed shut and the crematory fire lit. The door to hell had been locked, and locked away was the light. The harsh lying light. He was trapped in hell and darkness. Hell and darkness. It was like staring at a full moon and going deaf from the glow.

There was nothing to see… there was nothing to see with.

It had been painless, as promised. But 'painless' doesn't mean it won't hurt. It just means you won't be able to feel it when it strikes.

Seymour blinked, and suddenly wished he hadn't.

Seymour vomited, and wished he hadn't done that either. The room had reeked before. Torture had its own particular stench to itself. The stench of old blood hadn't been washed away. The rot was gone, but only mostly. The smell of rats was overpowering and the most effective torture always makes the victim empty their bowels, one way or another. There were more intricate smells that he couldn't identify and that was fine with him. They were like the stitches in a mask. The pieces fall together, but the stitches hold it all together. Without them, nothing would culminate in a horrifying figure that distorts a face into an entirely new entity.

Now the place smelled like vomit.

Stone, hard stone, cold stone, uncaring, uneven stone was under his legs. He was forced to kneel.

Metal, colder than the stone, chewed on his wrists when he tugged. He was shackled with his arms behind his back.

Most of his clothes were missing. He was left with his dignity, but not much else.

That was all there was. There was him. He was cold. He was bound. He was trapped. He was surrounded by sin.

There was fake sin all around. Fake sin that slowly murdered enemies in the war, enemies of the church of Yevon, and much, much later, Al Behd was all around him. True sin, the sin of hubris, the sin of blindness in the light of war, in the light of the church, in the light of racism, was all around him. Deep sin, the sin of torture, of coveting blood, of changing people, innocent or not, into less than an object, into excrement that should be honored when you plunge your hand in it, was all around him.

Seymour had been torturing himself mentally in every sense of the word and a few others. Some people who can as through torture with their lives do so because they can hide in the only place they can—the safest place they can: their own mind.

The mind is dark. The mind comforts. But in the dark you can't see. If you can't see, you can lose your way, and never find your way back.

Seymour was close to slipping, and had been for a long time. Now he was given the chance to run away and never turn back.

He was about to recede into his own head—only a little he promised himself—when he heard footsteps. He was jerked out of his dreams before he had them and into reality: nothing.

He heard the door crash open, falling off its hinges and landing on the floor.

He turned away as the door fell and turned back to the footsteps in fear. Everyone opens their eyes at the last moment to see the oncoming train, or the fire all around them.

The thing about Seymour is that he doesn't fear pain. Pain is pain. Physically. He doesn't care how much he bleeds. But mentally and physically and pain knows not depths, no mercy, no limits. A mere prick done by the worst who for the wrongest why is poison to him.

"It's just me," a voice said. It would be hard for anyone else to imagine it as comforting.

"Donna?" he asked, feeling her small hand on his shoulder momentarily.

She grabbed his waist and pulled him up as he felt large hands grabbed his shackles and yank them from the wall.

"I'm not sure I caught his name," Seymour said. Etiquette for torture prisoners wasn't something he'd been taught.

"Hi name's Bartello. Can you stand?" Donna asked.

"Poorly," he answered as she let go of him.

Donna hissed inwardly, trying to be as quiet as possible. "Here, bend down," she said, taking a white scarf out of her pocket.

Seymour obeyed and she tied the scarf over his face, over his eyelids and empty sockets.

He was about to thank her when she stopped him. "There's someone else down here. She'll get you out. We're going back to the entrance ahead of you two."

"Wait, what?" Seymour asked, and then doubled over. Before he fell over, someone caught him.

Seymour only knew one person who wore leather gloves…

"You?"

"Yuna's fighting people off and Rikku's in the airship ready to take off, come on," she said, grabbing him by the mechanical hand and leading him away.

"Gently, please," he said, stumbling forward. This wasn't good. He couldn't tell where she wanted him by sight. He couldn't follow by touch. The halls were made to echo and he couldn't follow by sound.

"My head feels like hell," he said.

"Severe dehydration, I'd say," she said. "Why do you have—" she reached up to take the scarf from his face.

"Don't!" he yelped, smacking her hand away and was suddenly panting in fear. "Please, don't."

"I won't, I promise," Paine said. "Just… follow me, alright."

"Take my hand… my real hand. And go slow."

"Here," Paine said, taking his hand and walking slowly and lead him down the hallways.

……………

Seymour had only heard of these hallways. They were still accessable if one knew where the secret entrance was. After that, it was only a matter of finding your way through a labyrinth full of traps and remembering how to get out.

"Hug the wall," Paine instructed him.

He did, once he found the wall.

He tugged on her hand, telling her to stop.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I smell dead people," he said.

"The place is pull of pits you can't see until you're in them," Paine said. "There's one right in front of you. Someone must have fallen in. Maybe plural. Come on. And take that off." She started to lead him along the wall slowly.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, just so you know, it'll make it a bit harder to get you through the angry mob."

"What angry mob?"

"You're not popular."

"Never was."

"Ever since the trial ended, people have been trying to get in to kill you. They didn't like the verdict. It's pretty big for two hours assembly, especially that they found the entrance."

"The trial ended two days ago."

Paine stopped immediately. Seymour stopped himself less immediately.

"You mean… You mean it's already happened?" Paine turned around to try and face him. He was making it difficult.

"The sentence has already been carried out."

"But… but what about witnesses?"

"I was enough witness for myself."

"That's not fair."

"Trials are because things are not fair." His voice never changed. Your perception of it did. Now it sounded as if—and sound as if it had always been so—that he knew he had no choice in such matters, that he made the best of a fate he could not control, that he regretted letting it happen and was wishing it never had in a sorrow he was too polite to spill out onto another. He was prisoner to what others did because he recognized their power. He was a polite prisoner. No one wanted to know about his cage.

She and her friends had risked their lives. They had risked other lives. Seymour didn't risk lives he wasn't positive were better off dead.

"How do you know your way around so well?" he asked the air above her head.

"I—I used was the recorder for the Crimson Squad—they—"

"I know who they were, I rescued one of them," he said, looking up.

"Baralai…" she whispered. Her friend had run to safety: Seymour. He'd taken power after the fall of the Maesters. He'd sentenced Seymour to… to something. It wasn't good, considering he was insistent on hiding it. Her best friend had done this to someone she loved, to his own protector. Seymour had sealed his fate in kindness.

There were too many links in the chain. The more she thought, the more it bound her.

"It's not fair!" she screamed, punching the wall. Anger flooded out and changed to tears. Now she understood how Yuna felt. The world wasn't fair, but damnit, it should be sometimes. You be able to make a little patch of fair in the chaos of unfairness.

She sniffled and found the strength to pull herself back into anger when he sat his hand on her shoulder.

"I don't understand."

"Because…!" she said, then choked. She tried again. "Because I knew him! Because he was my friend years ago. Because… Because I'm going to make him pay for what he did! What did he do to you, damnit! What did he do?" she screeched, tearing the scarf from his face before he could catch her.

All he had to alert himself was her voice, and it had flipped so rapidly. He wasn't the only one with an exterior that would crack.

…………………………….

The weather hadn't been helping the situation for either side in the fight. Wind was going anyway, including straight up, straight down, and in circles. Every few feet, the direction changed. It was raining on a few square feet, and on another few square feet yards away. It was snowing and blazing hot, sometimes in the same place.

A few hours ago, there's bee nothing. No weather, not even a breeze. The weather was a temperature for you not to notice the air being there at all without focusing on breathing.

Light had no idea what to do. Nothing had a shadow. People would have been afraid of wandering into something two dimensional if they weren't so busy trying to kill their way into murder. Or prevent it.

Apparently Seymour woke up confused. His mind didn't know what to do, and thus, neither did anything influenced by it.

Then, suddenly, a howl—a frighteningly unison of howls blended into one—shot through the air and burrowed into one's brain and into the deeper regions of personalized imagined hell and pulled out nightmares.

Everyone stopped. People stopped in blocking and hitting and no one noticed what hit and where if it did until after the echoes of the howl had died away and been thoroughly buried.

And then the riots stopped. Yuna was no longer responsible as fending the rioters away.

Shadows suddenly shot from everything, and the demons shot from those. They bounded from the darkness, teeth gnashing while changing shape, conforming to the personalized nightmares of individuals they scooped up and devoured using said teeth.

Yuna was back to saving the world. Now she felt sick.

She had to save those who'd tear Seymour in half while he was still alive and enjoy it.

She had to get close enough to the monsters to chase them away from devouring people, but she couldn't let anyone slip in without them.

She didn't stop to think that the only thing to bring order to Seymour's mental chaos was terror.

The only thing to bring his darkness to light was hell.

………………………..

This part of the halls were not made for echoes. The walls soaked in the sounds of Seymour's screams and the sobs they turned into.

Seymour was on the floor, holding his face and sobbing loudly.

Paine just stood there, the scarf still in her hands. No one ever expects it just hiding behind a door, or as something you just wake up to. No one can ever foresee something that shatters reality. Then one day you open the door and there is broken reality and it walks right in and makes itself at home.

"Why… of all people… why you?" Seymour asked as his sobs subsided. He kept his face covered.

"I don't understand," Paine muttered.

Seymour contemplated shutting up while his brain caught up before his terrified emotions, but decided against it. He still had no real reason to trust these people not to shoot him in the leg for information. He may have been paranoid, but his current situation did bode that nothing was going to end well for him.

"Because…" he muttered, trying to gather his fear into a coherent sentence. Words seemed to be running away screaming. "Because… I think I love you."

Paine knelt down and did her best to hold him despite his struggles against it. As much as he refused, he was even more insistent to keep his face covered and eventually she won.

"It's alright!" she told him. "It's alright… because I love you too."

"No!" Seymour yelped, then went silent, save for noises he made as he tried to push his way out of her arms.

Trust is not something you do. Trust is something you have. Someone can take it. You can give it.

Seymour guarded his very well. Trust was the core of dignity and that was really all he wanted and the first thing anyone ever took from him—the first way they hurt him.

Little words in an all-too convenient situation wouldn't work. In fact, they didn't work on Yuna, and she believed in princes and castles, albeit flying ones with rockets.

Those were words off a page, and old oft-read page at that. Those words were for dreamers who didn't know what dreams were for.

Paine refused to let go. Her grip was getting tighter and unbeknownst to her she was daring blood on his bare shoulders. She said those words and she was forcing him to them. She was forcing him back to the airship; there was no leaving, no safety elsewhere, no waiting for the violence to die down, no distractions. Everything she offered to him was a prison.

It was Yuna again, but Yuna never offered salvation from herself.

Yuna merely killed. She never forced him on the floor and left him to rot under her boot.

Stubbornness and intelligence were waging a war. This time there was no escalation to fight. This time he wasn't dead and there was no wash of bloodstained emotions that rusted everything else.

This time intelligence won out.

With a small sniffle, the last piece of Seymour's mind—the tiniest shred still tied around some perverted sense of hope of hope—broke.

…………….

The windows and noise of the airship drowned out the world inside so much it was like living in a soup of something long dead that had been disdained by any other living thing who should be recycling it.

Seymour had gone silent since Paine had held him in her arms.

He was told not to sit around and mope in the hall, so he went to his own room, tripped on furniture without noticing, and moped while standing up.

If one went out onto the deck, they'd feel the wind made of torturous slashing whips that burned straight into your bone. If they survived that, they'd feel the rain that shot upwards, all the water evaporating from the ground in shooting needles of heat. If they stood around longer, only a few seconds, they'd feel the lightning. The air was too thick with clouds that looked and smelled of vomited blood and drew strange pictures on the backs of one's eyes to see anything, even lightning, but the force was there. No weather could take the force out of lightning. No nightmare could dismiss it.

The windshield constantly rippled as the airship hovered somewhere—where no one knew anymore—over something—no one cared to find out what because that meant going outside, the blasts of the lightning always reminding the occupants that they were lucky to have made everything severely reinforced.

A day went by and everyone concerned knew Seymour wasn't sleeping.

Outside, beneath the lightning, the rain, the wind, and the sky, every demon was howling, enjoying itself immensely.

It was only a matter of time, and the entire world knew it.


	19. Chapter 19

The whole airship seemed to be vibrating very slowly, creating a white noise that seemed to encroach upon one's personal space.

Yuna was pacing back and forth and Rikku was standing near the wall watching everything. Everything was beyond Barkeep's comprehension so he just stood there doing and thinking nothing. Paine wandered into the room.

"Yuna—" Paine started

"I couldn't do anything to stop them, it wasn't my—"

Rikku eeped.

"Whatever," Paine said. "I think someone should go talk to him."

Rikku eeped again, this time with an even more terrified echo to it.

"Why?" Yuna asked. "I thought he was scared of me."

"Yeah but—" But what? 'But he doesn't love me?' 'But I told him I loved him?' "I scared him off. Someone needs to at least get him talking."

Rikku Eeped in a way that gave it capital letters.

"Will that help?" Yuna asked.

"It couldn't hurt," Paine said.

"I'll do it!" Rikku yelped and ran through the door.

Everyone, including the Hypello, just stared at the door.

"I meant you," Paine muttered after a few minutes.

"I didn't notice," Yuna said, truthfully.

The Hypello just kept staring.

……………..

Seymour had been sulking at the engine. He had been sitting against the wall, but he had fallen over and moping hadn't propped him back up.

Rikku was never very strong.

But speed had something to do with it.

If Rikku had been going any faster, she would have severely dented the wall trying to take Seymour through it.

As such, she banged Seymour on the wall several times quickly to drag his dad weight though the door before slamming it.

Altogether, Seymour had no idea what was happening until after the ringing in his ears died away.

"You're safe now," Rikku said.

Seymour stared at her like a wet dog knowing it'll never be fed or walked.

"I'm not going to let them hurt you," Rikku said proudly.

Seymour just continued to stare at her through his blindfold.

"So you don't have to worry about that," she said, the pride wavering in the face of a silent tragic catharsis. Besides, she knew what was behind the scarf… not behind the empty eyes.

He stared straight past the nothing, straight past the fabric, straight past everything she couldn't see, and stared right at her.

Rikku swallowed.

"Do you want to?"

"Huh?" Rikku replied.

"Do you want to protect me?"

"I…" Rikku started, then stopped. This was somewhere her train of simple circular logic didn't go. She could choose morality of rights and wrongs. In fact it was easier for her because she didn't put herself above others to have herself toppled over when the pedestal is moved and because she doesn't try to think of things in abstracts. Somehow, Rikku found it easy to apply facts to morality and vice versa.

The problem was, how does one tell this to someone?

But then, why ask if you don't want answers? That's just stupid.

"I… don't know," she answered. "Kinda…no."

"Then why bother?" Seymour asked, seemingly having not felt the insult. He was smart enough to know, but this time he didn't seem to notice.

"'Cause… you said… you said you didn't want… and you said Yunie… but you…Can I ask a question?"

"I can't stop you," he answered. _And I can't go back in time a few seconds, either._

"Why did you… why did… your…"

"Why did I kill my father?"

"Why did you kill and you asked me not to let Yunie kill you?"

"I didn't." Seymour stopped staring at her and seemed to be studying his own personally darkness. "I killed him because he was going to kill me. He found me in Macalania and took me to Guadosalam. He told me… he told me it all looked so perfect and he'd finally get rid of me. He'd say he killed me as I attacked him.

"All I knew next, being abandoned in that room, was that I still had a hunting knife with me. And then I was in his room, watching him fall forever and never hitting the floor and everything began to spin. I heard foot steps… and then…"

"You lied about it?" Rikku noticed Seymour was shaking. His nails, especially those on his mechanical hand, were digging into his clothes, tearing though.

"I vomited on the carpet and passed out," he said. "I nearly ran away again. I thought this time I'd be killed in the right… but they didn't. They needed a leader and I was stuck… I wanted to go home… back to the temple."

"I want to go home too sometimes… I mean… when you were…oh."

"I paid for it. I promise you."

"I meant… I didn't realize I lost my home because of you because I made you lose yours."

"It doesn't matter to me now," Seymour said. There was no hint of any emotion in his voice, nor any hint that he was trying to mask any. "As long as you're happy with your decision."

"I kinda dunno."

"Then make sure you're happy with it before you let it happen. That's all I asked for."

"So… I can go if I want?"

"I wouldn't stop you if you wanted."

"Are you happy with yours?" Rikku asked. "About your father?"

"I used to think so. I'm not as sure anymore."

"Maybe you can go back someday." It was possible, right? There was New Yevon, so anything could be possible.

"I've burned too many bridges."

"Fire can be pretty," Rikku said. "Were they bad bridges?"

"I just didn't want to die."

"That's good isn't it?"

"I'm not sure anymore."

But there was one more bridge to set aflame. It would hurt, but leaving it untouched would burn more, and deeper. "Tell Mi—Paine not to come down please."

"Okay," Rikku said. She was starting to bounce more. Things had at least started to make sense to her. What's broken was fixed, right? "Bye."

For some reason, despite his precautionary warning Rikku would give, a pang struck through Seymour's heart. He felt ripped inside, as if he were bleeding into a bottomless abyss.

Bridge burnt, the fire was cold and hostile. But… better than left untouched… right?

Now he'd never know, and embers burnt his skin and mind and heart.

Burnt bridges all around, and never a comforting flame.

……………………

Rain is water. A cloud is water. The sky is air. Wind is air.

What was outside was magic.

What the ship plowed through was soup. What beat against the window was muck.

Giant splatters of a disgusting green and brown hit the windows constantly, destroying the visions of the clouds. The splatters were only lit against the darkness when lighting flashed, illuminating them in color and then in a haunting vision of blood upon the glass.

What was worse was beyond the play of splatters, stained the color of nausea and dripping blood were the clouds beyond.

They moved to no wind. They roiled in on themselves, churning and spinning and foaming. Pictures moved and exploded into new ones.

The ship had been left to fly itself. They had no direction though which to brave the frightening weather and the visions.

The clouds had frightened away the crew, and yet, kept them crowded together to watch and stare in wonder.

Hands. It was always hands. Clawed, gruesome, distorted abhorrent visions of hands reached out to something unseen, then lightning would flash, showing pictures in blood and vomit.

The hand would tear back in pain and as the thunder rolled the hand turned upward, opening in a vulnerable gesture as skin and flesh rotted away.

New hands tore from the crowd. Strong, muscled hands, yet aged, vaguely gnarled hands—the hand of an old man, a strong old man—reached out and tore at the bones, ripping muscle and ligaments from them. Each snap was highlighted with a flash of lightning, each break with thunder.

The old hands would pull back into the clouds and once they were gone, gentle calm, caring, offering hand reached in supplication out of the clouds to a little one, a child's hand.

Then there would be a long flash of lightning that illuminated the drops as they began to move on the glass.

It was a moving painted picture, shifting into a form of a beautiful sad woman as she drove a knife right into her own chest, smiling.

She fell backward, her hands still reaching out, trying to offer something.

She stopped falling, but began to writhe. The shoulders dislocated and fell limp as her back began to bubble. Her hair slid away as the scalp cam off and the face twisted to become inside out.

Tendrils exploded from her back, wrapping around her soft, thin legs and they molded themselves in place and crushing the bones underneath. Bits of skin began to crawl like ants, piecing themselves together in the form of wings. Bones, ripped and raw and smashed into shape joined the skin.

Blood dripped from the broken body, and finally, the dead arms crossed as chains appeared and as she let out a scream hidden in thunder just after the lightning died but the image remained, one eye fell from the body and the socket bled.

The image faded from ones' vision slowly. The inhabitants would hear screams, wails, crying, yelling, threats and pleas within the thunder.

The skies were blank now, yet a hand was forming and the drops slid away and new ones replaced them.

The fear was not from the sky, but from the wonder of how it would get worse.

………………

"What is it?" Rikku asked, after several minutes of watching. She was backed up against the other two girls. The boys weren't far away.

"It means things are getting worse," Paine said.

"Yunie should go talk to him," Rikku said.

"But he's afraid of him," Paine said. "I'll go."

"No, don't' go!" Rikku said, grabbing Paine's arm tightly enough to hurt.

"Ow! Get off!" Paine yelled, trying to beat Rikku off. It didn't work and Rikku held on tighter with both hands.

"Yunie should go. She's good at this. She can make him unafraid of her and they can be friends!"

"Where'd you get that idea?" Paine asked, now trying to crowbar Rikku off.

"Because he said he didn't want you down there."

There was silence save for the thunder as Paine stopped struggling. Yuna's heavy footfalls were drowned out as she left.

………..

Seymour couldn't see the clouds. He couldn't see the hands. He couldn't see the droplets or images they made. He couldn't even see the lightning.

He could only hear the weather, and accompanied with it, whispers his mother had said to him ages ago.

He stared at the window and only saw his own thoughts. He remembered bits and pieces, nothing clear, all intangible and incoherent—emotions, sounds, pictures. Everything blurred together. Nothing gave him peace.

He had his hand on the pane of the window. He wanted to feel something, even if it was raindrops that felt like hard tears.

He heard the door open. He didn't move. He didn't say anything. He didn't blink.

Privacy wasn't for him now. He'd given up trying; he'd given up fighting. He'd never prove he was good enough, not even to himself now. He had no right to hope and accepted that now.

And yet, a tiny part of him still kept on wanting, and that last bit of his soul ached in constant pain.

He heard footsteps nearing him and he tensed. He recognized them and only one person wore shoes that sounded that way. Yuna was here. She wanted to hurt him.

"I came to talk"

"I do not wish to talk, Yuna." There was no fight, merely a response. There were no lies, merely an answer unwanted.

"Please," Yuna begged, taking hold of his arm.

"I don't want to be touched," he said, not moving to take her hand away. No more fights. He merely turned in her direction. "Let go please."

"I want to help," she said, coming closer and keeping her hand on his arm.

"You don't Yuna." Seymour turned back to the window as the lightning flashed and it made pictures in blood. Then the thunder rumbled and he chose it over Yuna. He stepped closer to the window despite Yuna's firm grip on his arm. "You want to use me. You want Tidus back, or maybe you want the storm to go away. But you don't care about me."

"But what's wrong? I just—"

"Want to live? Think you should help?"

"So?"

"So those were my reasons. I wanted to live and I died for it. You can die for your reasoning. I don't care anymore Yuna. You can't make me. The time has passed for that. It passed a long time ago."

"This isn't fair!" Yuna complained.

"Fairness is when you pay for what you have done. This is fair," he said, gesturing to his blindfold. "You can see it yourself."

"But I—"

Seymour put his mechanical hand up where he thought her mouth was. He was off by an inch, but it silenced her nonetheless.

"You lied to me. You tricked me. You gave me promises you never intended to keep. Worst of all, you played with my heart. That is unfair. Pay for it and it will be fair again."

"Isn't there something you want?" Yuna asked. She let loose her grip on him. She hoped that might start trust from him. "I mean, I thought you loved me."

A vague frown formed on his lips for a split second.

He gently set his hands upon her shoulders and she smiled. He pushed her away softly.

He stepped back.

He remembered the wedding. It wasn't his doing. Everything about it was a mockery at this moment. He couldn't even see her now. All he could see then was her brave stoic face, and now he knew she was crying, trying to stay silent.

The tiny sliver of pain that was all he could feel wanted to comfort her. But how?

No more lies.

No more fight.

There was nothing for him to do.

"I loved what I thought you were back then. I thought you were kind and gentle. I thought you were caring and forgiving. I thought I loved that Yuna. I don't know anymore whether I love you or not. But I can't love the Yuna you are now.

"As for what I want… it's too late. I want… I want not to feel anymore. Nothing at all. You can't give me that. What I wanted before was someone to take away my fears, my nightmares… someone who could tell me once that I had the right to live. You never gave me that, and you cannot give me that now.

"I don't want lies.

"Go away, Yuna."

Yuna walked away, her footsteps echoing in the room, but they didn't drown out the sounds of her crying.

Seymour turned to the window, but the beat of the drops wasn't comforting anymore.

He turned to the room. He'd found out the painful way that someone had decorated it. There was a poster of something, and a bookshelf full of books. He could tell the title of one of them by tracing his fingers over it. From the title he guessed it was a romance.

Yuna was the only person who could have done this.

Seymour eased his way to the bed. He picked up something soft on the covers. He ran his fingers over it as he held in his cold metal hands. He held it softly, not wanting to damage it. He felt even more desperate not to harm it when he realized what it was. It was his old doll; a few pieces had been patched up.


	20. Chapter 20

Nightmares aren't real. Nightmares can't hurt you.

Night mares are not real life.

But this wasn't real life anymore.

The farplane was the unreal. The idea walked, the mind was on the outside, and the fayth were there with the people.

Reality and unreality had come apart.

But even the farplane follows the rules of the universe: it doesn't care what happens, and what happens will probably be worse than right now.

………………….

The demons were on the ground. They were angry. Their prey had taken to the air.

They say that fear gives you wings.

But what part of you flies when your back is to cold metal, all you can see is cruel darkness, having chased away all comfort, and all you can hear is thunder and the splatter of blood?

Where can you hide when you're running from yourself?

What can you do when you've given up fighting, and now you've given up running?

The ember of hope had died. There was nothing to protect against the cold and cruel dreams anymore. There was nothing but ashes of a soul.

Down below fear gave wings and nightmares took to the skies.

………………

Yuna didn't return. She went to the deck where she felt it would be safe.

It was only clouds and rain. It couldn't hurt her. The lightning was too far off.

She lets the filth splatter on her face. It gave her a chance to pretend the tears weren't there.

Then the clouds began to part to the sides of the ship. Blackness, moving blackness, with a shine that meant teeth began to approach, gaining speed as they did.

The wind picked up and blew straight at her from both directions; she'd have fallen off it the wind from the other side hadn't fought equally as hard.

She chose a direction and shielded her eyes from the blasting disgusting rain. The monsters were afraid of her. They wouldn't hurt her.

He'd see. She'd protect him and then he'd have to do what se said. She solved the problem. She'd save everyone.

Because she was Yuna.

And nothing ended like this.

Because she said so.

……………….

Burned bridges were shining bright finally.

Rikku had left, Yuna fled, and he'd never see Paine again… as it was meant to be.

No more hurt. No more pain. That was all he ever wanted, and more than he could hope for. He'd buried hope back underneath eh temple and he wasn't going to go look for it. There was no point.

There was nothing to hope for anyway. Not true kindness, not real caring, not a touch that wouldn't make him draw back. Not even redemption… or truth.

Yuna would come back.

That was her way. She didn't give up. She left to scheme for another trick, another stab of an icy sword, another chance to shed blood and hurt your heart.

'Let her' he decided. There was nothing more she could do, nothing more for her to take away. 'Let her feel pain finally…'

……………………

Yuna steadfastedly faced down her opponent. She was stronger. She was greater. He may fear her, but that meant she had him. She could force him to do as she wished, and that included ending this storm!

She had power over him!

The giant creature opened its toothy maw and barreled down on her, shadows and gleams hinting at several rows of teeth.

Yuna stood her ground.

…………………

No one saw the things coming. No one saw the clouds part. Below, the weather had appeared the same as the things approached.

All they felt was the downward punch, hard enough to send everything—people included—into the ceiling and back down to the floor.

"What's going on?" Rikku asked, tossing blankets and spheres and clothes away as she held her side.

"It's all over," Paine said, more to herself than to Rikku.

"It's what?" Rikku asked. Paine didn't answer as she went through the doors out of the bar-and-bedroom.

There was another crash, throwing everything to the back this time. Rikku crawled across the floor to look out the windows. There were strange black things moving in front of the windows. Lightning was flashing like a strobe, and the thunder was perfectly in sync. The storm was right on top of all of them.

"..xxvxvxxx –e lost---xxkkxvvxx –side engixxne kvxxkxxv…" the intercom blared. Then the while room tilted to the left.

…………..

Seymour felt around. He'd felt two seconds of nearly thrown through a wall along with the furniture, and then the room felt as if it tilted.

What was going on?

His hallucinations come to life weren't like this. They were manifest as things, creatures, not seasickness for a hummingbird.

Something suddenly tickled his nose.

Seymour put his hand on his face and suddenly didn't care if he was going to die.

His blindfold had slid out of place in the crash. His hand… he'd just put his hand… it was over his mouth, the mechanical fingers went over the nose, along the bridge, into…

His mouth tingled and he felt the bile rush up before he could taste it. He braced himself as he retched for a full minute.

The rattling of the ship stopped as he did. It stayed relatively steady as he struggled to his feet and groped his way out the door. He didn't want to stay with vomit and dangerous furniture.

…………….

Paine had to crawl through a slanted stairway, all the while being thrown into the walls or down the hallway.

She began to desperately wish the airship had stairs as she was forced to brave the elevator shaft, for it had become stuck during the initial crash.

The ship seemed to even out for a few minutes as she climbed down the shaft and forced open the doors that lead to the engine room. As she pried at them, the lights blinked off, flooding her world in darkness.

Something must have distracted him.

But that wouldn't same them for long. He wasn't very distractible… not from this.

Besides, they didn't have long. The air pressure was changing in the ship. One could feel the downward descent. It was only a matter of minutes until the ship and the ground had a fiery meeting.

Paine struggled into the engine room as another hit shook her and—she noticed immediately—Seymour.

Paine managed to grab the railing and get her other arm through it as they were knocked away. She managed to grab something as she hit the rail and the wall, ripping her cheek in the process.

She could feel something tugging at—no, what she had was trying to pull away. She'd grabbed his metal hand.

"It's me," she said, hoping that would make him calm down and stop.

Stop he did, calm he did not. The flames of the bridge were not supposed to fade away and reveal it still there.

"There's no point now," he said. There was nothing to his voice. That sweet, fighting arrogance was gone. The ember of want had died.

"I know, she said.

The banging had stopped again. Why?

No time to think. She should keep talking…

"I don't think there ever was a point," she said. "I tried to believe it, but I can't. I can't believe that loves saves the world, or that there's always happy endings if you try hard enough. Yuna could and I joined her because I wanted to. But I can't. I'm not Yuna."

……………..

The two demons both latched on to the ship, digging teeth as deep into the shattering metal as they could, then pulled in opposite directions.

…………

"Why did you come if there was no point?"

"Because you deserve it. Because you deserve to have someone with you at the end. You deserved better in life. I mean it. I don't care if I never even met you… you deserved to live…"

Somewhere, while saying those words, Paine began to feel that she was floating, not pressed against metal. She noticed her hand held onto nothing.

Then there was a great wave, spreading all over the darkness. The murk that stung to look at, that one couldn't see their own nose in was swashed away with an unfelt tidal wave of calm blackness. It was blackness you could see forever it.

Somewhere, off in the distance, the faintest of stars shone. An ember had been rekindled.

………..

Yuna looked around.

There was nothing but thick, murky painful darkness. It was the color of darkness in dreams. The color of pain, hate, despair.

Then, for no reason, a black dawn came over the murky world, and the world was purely black like a clear, dark night.

The air near her began to wave and shimmer. The fayth appeared. She was floating as Yuna was, but she was far away from Yuna, far off in the distance.

"I failed?" Yuna asked.

"No. You're friend gave back to Seymour what wasn't there for so long. She gave him hope. Without hope, the farplane and the world would have dwindled no matter what. Now, we have been given the power to do what should be done. There is one final task to be carried out. Are you ready Yuna?"

…………….

"Seymour?" Paine asked tentatively.

"We are keeping him from answering," a voice behind her said.

Paine spun around.

She'd never seen the fayth of Bahamut before. She had never seen a fayth.

"Who are you?" she asked. "You're not Seymour. In fact, I don't even know you."

"If you were a summoner, you would speak differently," the fayth answered.

"What's that mean?"

"It means… we have further plans for him… and you."

…………………

"Ready?" Yuna asked. "But we won. It's over. Isn't it?"

"Your friend gave him back hope, that which gives us power," Seymour's mother said. "But it will no doubt die again. We cannot risk it again, for as you've seen, he worsens severely."

"What do you need me to do?"

"You are the one who condemned him to the life of a fiend before granting him death. You destroyed the hope he held that could have saved the farplane. And yet, you are the one to save us twice. We all find it fitting that you be the one to give him a new chance at hope… at life."

"What happened to the others?"

"They died shortly after you did. We will grant those who died in the storm life again. We will grant you and your companions' life again. But only for the hope to keep hope."

…………….

"What do you mean by 'plans?'" Paine asked.

"Would you rather we kept you here and he forget you?"

"What do you mean? Why? What are you going to do to him?"

"He needs another chance at life. A kinder one. One that will sustain the farplane. There is too great a chance that even this will fail, but he is the last king of the Guado, and there is no one else to take the task of keeping us whole but him. If you two met again, you would both be happy, wouldn't you? If he remembers falling in love with you?"

"If he remains here… what will happen?" the fayth asked.

"He's still afraid, isn't he?"

"He still feels pain when he wants to be near you. You may stay and we can risk all, or—"

"I don't believe in this!" Paine stammered, suddenly crying. This was one big lie and he shouldn't have to suffer lies anymore. "This is Yuna's thing! She believes in love, not me!"

"And yet you do it…" The fayth took back the sphere. "Then your decision is made."

………………..

"I'll do it," they both agreed.

Seymour's mother's hand touched Yuna's abdomen. From far away, it seemed so close.

Paine took the sphere. Everything to her seemed far away.

……………..

The darkness shattered.

A burning sun in a searing sky was all the two could see.

And then someone welcomed them to the different paths they would take.

"Hey!" Rikku yelled, shaking the two furiously. "Hey you guys! You're not dead! You're breathing!"

"What?" Yuna asked, sitting up. She looked around. There were in Luca, on a dock.

Paine stood up. She was silent.

Both saw a familiar face. Yuna's hear t sang.

"Tidus!" she yelled, tears coming to her eyes.

Paine refused to cry.

Tidus was indeed standing on the dock, more confused than ever. Yuna rushed up and hugged him.

"It really is you! I missed you so much! I never want to leave you again!"

Tidus laughed. He hugged her back and then pushed her away enough to look into her eyes and speak. "You got a bathroom around here?"


End file.
